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I have googled everything, I am desperate. I have installed Catalina yesterday and tried all the steps here (and more) that were logical to me. The thing is I have the feeling the current version has changed again (I read of the stuff you could do to get system read/write on Catalina but nothing works in my case). I have a parallel MacOS / Windows System with a third exFat partition and in Mojave and Lower I always create links for /Applications and /Users to put all non systemrelevant data into the exFat, it always worked fine (though, you have to make some adjustments in order to work with iCloud apps etc). I wanted to do the same, so I followed all the normal steps to create links for /Applications (also tried with /System/Volume/Data/Applications). But it does not work at all. Usually for example I ditto the /Application to the exFat partition and mv the old one into /Application.old (just to be safe), then I create the link. But I cannot rename or delete /Applications! Is it because they created Hard/systemlinks in Catalina?? I don't get it. Will I be able to link out the folders to my exFat partition? Any suggestions?

BingoBongo
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  • Just a list of things I did: csrutil disable, sudo mount -uw /, sudo mount -uw /System/Volumes/Data, sudo chmod -R 755, sudo mv /Applications /Applications.old, sudo rm -rf /Applications, sudo ln -s /Volumes/SecondaryVolume/Applications /Applications (also tried for /System/Volumes/Data/Applications): The last result is Operation not permitted – BingoBongo May 31 '20 at 09:04
  • If you have another mac, try booting this Catalina mac into target disk mode and edit the links/partitions on the other mac. It may work. – Joy Jin May 31 '20 at 09:29
  • Catalina uses a read-only System partition. No amount of crsutil or sudo chmod will change that. – Tetsujin May 31 '20 at 09:42
  • that is not true Tetsujin, it definitely HAD been possible, as confirmed in many other posts but seemingly Apple has changed the effect of sudo mount -uw / – BingoBongo May 31 '20 at 10:07
  • Yes it is possible somehow. (I was able to do it on catalina with SIP and bunch of other stuff disable/modified) Sadly I can't remember how I managed it. I'm going trough my history and see if I can find anything helpful. – Roxiun May 31 '20 at 10:18
  • that would be great Roxiun! Hope you can find your adjustments! – BingoBongo May 31 '20 at 12:09
  • "as confirmed in many other posts" .. links would be useful. btw, use @name format to ensure your intended recipient gets a notification, otherwise they may never see it. – Tetsujin May 31 '20 at 16:43
  • @tetsujin, thanks for the info, here are some links that show that is had been possible to get write permissions: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/375603/catalina-not-allowing-to-change-read-write-permissions-despite-having-sip-disabl?rq=1 AND https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/caiue5/macos_catalina_readonly_file_system_with_sip/ – BingoBongo Jun 01 '20 at 08:14
  • @Roxiun, have you found something out? I found out that you can still get mount -uw / to work in recovery mode. HOWEVER you cannot change the Names of Firmlings (Applications for example). If you try that in Volume/Data you still get not permitted. if you try it in read only side you CAN mv but it will create two folders. And also if you try to reverse this mv places the change INTO the Firmling folder (Applications). Really strange behavior – BingoBongo Jun 01 '20 at 08:21

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