Beta 2 root read-only

Open Finder, navigate to the disk, show info by cmd-i

Enable the Read & Write permisson for admin, then it should work.

This is the correct and intended behavior which was announced for all versions of macOS Catalina, except for the first Developer Preview.

You can try to remount the root file system for read/write access, but this setting will only survive until the next reboot. If the remount command is also rejected, you will have to disable System Integrity Protection first.

That doesn't work in Catalina.

Thanks @mbsoft. I probably missed this announcement but was wondering if this was an intended change. Maybe something to do with Catalyst..? Anyway - thanks for the confirmation, appreciate it.

It works for me. I'm currently on beta 2.

and not having the read-only issue on beta 1.

I should mention that, I did disable the system integrity protection before upgade

and it stays disabled after upgrade to 10.15

Catalina segregates the OS from user data by literally having them in separate partitions, and the one for the system is read-only. The Finder obfuscates this, but you can see it if you open Disk Utility. So I believe you're running into the proverbial "feature, not bug" situation.

Note that turning off SIP defeats the purpose of Apple's security efforts, including the ones being introduced in Catalina that have produced this situation. But hey, it's your machine. :-)

Yes, this is a security feature. What I cannot seem to find is good documentation on whether there is another way of ending up with the same result - i.e. root mount points through firmlinks without having to disable SIP.

I think it might be in /System/Volumes/Data (the data volume - root)... but will have to wait for a while to test the theory... (computer is busy).

Addendum, tested it - unfortunately it did not build a merged root directory from doing that. I figured at least I could take those directories and add them to favourites... but logging out and logging back in left my favourites -- pruned of a lot of the directories I had made favourites 😮

As a replacement of my old structure where I had things that I did not want in my user directory... like source code for projects or content I store locally like PDF books... I ended up creating about 5 specialized volumes... which show up in the finder under locations. Side benefit is each are snapshotable and available for replication.

Yes, this is a security feature overall and regular users.

It's a little bit buggy for advanced users.

For example

There's no way to disable system fonts without disable SIP, however you can turn SIP on later.

and now it's more diffcult to disalbe some system fonts due the part of them move to /System and sealing with read-only.

as @bkkcanuck8 and @dbrom

sometimes you just want to make a symbolic link at the root to make the life easier, but the new "feature" keeps it away.

Wish there is a "sudo sudo" under the SIP protection, then it will be a good feature.

This may be slightly off-topic, but I work in a very restrictive environment and up to now have been able to remove system programs that have no function in that enviroment (Chess, Home, Stocks, VoiceMemos, Siri and other "clutter"). In Catalina Beta that is no longer possible. I was able to remove some of these programs in Beta 1 but Beta 2 prevents this. I have enabled root and tried to remove these, I have disabled SIP, enabled root and tried, I have said a bunch of naughty words when it failed.

I'm all for security (I spend a lot of time making sure it's there) but this is a bit much.