Uninstalling Sophos on a Mac

Since the docs specify that one has to decrypt a partition and then uninstall the app before upgrading the OS, and since it is mentioned in the readme and Uset Guide, it would be really really good if:

1. you included uninstall instructions in the readme and the User Guide

2. a user never had to do this to upgrade the OS.

#2 is a major usability problem for us.  A horrible, major usability problem.

Are there plans to fix #2 and is it even possible to fix #2?

Thanks, 

- Alex

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Zavatone wrote:

Since the docs specify that one has to decrypt a partition and then uninstall the app before upgrading the OS, and since it is mentioned in the readme and Suet Guide, it would be really really good if:

1. you included uninstall instructions in the readme and the User Guide

2. a user never had to do this to upgrade the OS.

#2 is a major usability problem for us.  A horrible, major usability problem.

Are there plans to fix #2 and is it even possible to fix #2?

Thanks, 

 - Alex

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Hi Alex,

Thank you for posting your question in the SophosTalk community forums. Aside from the 2 items in this post, what do you think of SDE for Mac encryption overall?

To address your questions directly:

1. Uninstallation instructions are found in the Release Notes for Mac. The snippet you are looking for reads as follows
        "To uninstall Sophos SafeGuard for Mac OS X use the uninstaller package Sophos SafeGuard Uninstaller.pkg in /Library/Sophos SafeGuard. You need to decrypt the hard drive first."
2. Regarding your feature request, there is an current thread which Product Management monitors. Please post your request to the Enhancement Requests conversation.

Hope this helps and thanks again for your post.

Yeah, I was finally able to find the uninstall instructions after a google search, but I found it odd and time consuming that after performing an install, that the supplied docs didn't mention how to remove the software.  I was originally supplied only the ssg_osx_55 DMG file with the User's Guide and the Readme.  Since the instructions were not in there, I had to hunt and peck around to find out how to uninstall the app.  Uninstall instructions should at least be in the User's Guide.

With regards to the software itself, encrypting and decrypting a drive took so long that I did not have any chance to test it.  My goal was to run some time trials with a stopwatch but after realizing the amount of time it takes to set the software up on a disk, there was no way I had the time to test it before my loaner machine had to be decrypted and returned.

Prior to this loaner, all the Intel Macs I had available to test with can not run Sophos because they can not boot to the 64 bit kernel.  Yes, these machines will fade away, but these are what I have at my disposal to test with.   Significant amounts of time were spent to get an Intel Mac to test with, only to find out that it can not run your software.  

Reading the stipulation that you must decrypt the drive before installing an OS upgrade sent shivers down my spine.  Honestly, I'm afraid of the day we will have to use this software, because I can't simply reinstall the OS on a box or update the OS on a box without a massively time consuming decrypt, wait a day, install, encrypt, wait another day.

Honestly, I'm feeling that using this software will provide us with a maintenance nightmare and decreased productivity teamwide as a result.  I'm not supposed to be doing support, I'm supposed to be architecting software.  Any time that is taken away from my main job responsibilities is not something I look towards with great joy.

Trying to be honest here and this is my opinion with the small amount of experience I've had so far with the product.

Cheers, 

- Alex

Just to add some information:

Concerning enc/dec speed: Encrypting a HD takes some time. It is mostly related to the fact that every single sector needs to be read/written. The acutal bottleneck in this case is not our software it's the HD itself. You'll see a significant performance boost when using SSD's. While I understand that it's annoying to "wait" for the initial encryption to complete you can still continue working with the machine and could do all the tests.

Just to make it clear: We do not need a 64 Kernel, but require(d) a 64bit EFI firmware. The next release scheduled for beginning of 2011 will also support "old" EFI32 firmware environments.

Concerning decryption/OS upgrades: Upgrading an OS is not a trivial task, pretty much everything changes, from the Kernel to the boot loader. So it's probably better to not support such scenario. Otherwise it could lead to complete data loss. I'm not aware of any Full Disk Encryption software (either on Mac or on Windows) that allows _encrypted_ OS upgrades. Updates are not a problem as those usually introduce only minor changes. Upgrades are in fact prevented by Apple as they seem to detect that they will not be able to access the HD without specific drivers...

Regards,

Frank

I installed the trial version and did not do encryption. Now I want to uninstall and run the uninstaller PKG but tells me that first I need to decrypt the drive. How do I remove a trial?

Mac OS 10.6.7

I have downloaded the trial and isntalled it. Then I found out I had to create a partition which I can't do now. I thought it would work as the one I have for Windows, i.e. mount a file.

I am trying to uninstall and as I have never encrypted a disk I am running the advertised:

"To uninstall Sophos SafeGuard for Mac OS X use the uninstaller package Sophos SafeGuard Uninstaller.pkg in /Library/Sophos SafeGuard."

I am root and still get perission denied.

How do I get past this?

Regards,

Thomas.

When you run the commands to decrypt or uninstall it may ask you to authenticate to the SG system with the username and password depending on what version of the SG for mac you have.  The pkg file is the correct way to uninstall the system and remove the POA environment.  I was able to do with without any issues.

Hi Crypto,

thank you very much for posting. Since the initial post that you replied to is already quite old I would recommend to create a new suppoprt ticket for your problem (unless you could solve the issue with the last reply here) to get as up to date information as possible.

Regards

Dan