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8

I know the disadvantages of disabling kext signing, but I was wondering how I can actually disable this on Mac OS X 10.10 "Yosemite"?

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up vote 18 down vote accepted

To disable the kext signing security setting:

sudo nvram boot-args=kext-dev-mode=1

After changing this setting you need to restart the computer to have OS X recognize it.

It is important to note that the kext-signing setting is global, if you disable it you should be careful to only install system drivers from sources that you trust.

To reenable again use:

sudo nvram -d boot-args
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so how do you enable it back ON ? – Buscar웃 Dec 22 '14 at 19:56
12  
Careful: You may already have set other boot-args (I did, to enable old-style external monitor behavior on my Macbook). To check, use the command nvram boot-args. If that prints any values (e.g. "iog=0x0"), add them to the above command using a comma, like this: sudo nvram boot-args=kext-dev-mode=1,iog=0x0. Then, to disable the kext-dev-mode, do not use the "-d" command but rather omit that part when setting the old boot-args. – Thomas Tempelmann Jan 7 '15 at 20:33
    
I have a MacPro 4.1 and the "nvram boot-args=kext-dev-mode=1" command doesn't save the value persistent in the NVRAM. When I look with "nvram -p" directly after setting it, it prints out the value. After a reboot, it's gone. How can that happen, or better, how can that be repaired? – konran May 4 '15 at 15:39
    
Ok, my question is solved: the Mavericks-to-Yosemite upgrade broke the NVRAM. After a NVRAM-reset the boot-args value keeps stored. – konran May 4 '15 at 16:17

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