Chrome OS - "This setting is managed by device owner"

chrome-os-this-setting-is-managed-by-device-owner.md

Chrome OS - "This setting is managed by device owner"

This may permanently damage your Chrome OS installation, or cause problems in future. Proceed with caution and take a backup.

Sometime after updating Chrome OS, some options in settings may get locked out with the label "This setting is managed by the device owner". If you have root access, continue with the guide. If not and you are dual booting, check out Force developer mode on Chrome OS to see how to edit the shadow file to get root access.

1. Open crosh (Alt+Ctrl+T). Type shell. A new green coloured chronos prompt appears. Type sudo su to get into red coloured root shell. Enter password if necessary. Alternately you can also open tty by Ctrl+Alt+F2, login as root and proceed.
2. A basic search of the files with "owner" in their name can be done as below. This step is optional, but good to know. It may take a long time. You may jump to the next step without performing this step.

   cd /
   find . -type f -iname "*owner*" ! -path "./media/*" ! -path "./run/arc/media/*" ! -path "*android*" 2> /dev/null
   

3. The list should have the file: ./mnt/stateful_partition/encrypted/var/lib/whitelist/owner.key. Go to the file location.

   cd /mnt/stateful_partition/encrypted/var/lib/whitelist/
   

4. Doing an ls command lists all the files, including some policy related files. We do not need any of them. Move all of them to any directory. Here we are already logged in as root (in red prompt) and we will move them in the root user's home, under a policy_backup directory. This is just for backup of these files.

   mkdir ~/policy_backup
   mv * ~/policy_backup/
   

5. Proceed with a reboot. Enter:

   reboot
   

After rebooting, new policy files in the above directory should regenerate. Now all the previously locked options in settings should get unlocked.