New command line tools in Mountain Lion manage encryption, sleep and sharing

For fans of the Terminal, Mountain Lion brought some new command-line utilities. Perhaps the most notable is fdesetup, which Apple explains briefly: "fdesetup allows third-party management tools to enable FileVault, determine encryption status, capture and manage recovery keys, and add users to a FileVault-encrypted system as well as synchronize directory-based user authentication credentials with the local credentials for FileVault access."

Apple provides a 'man' page for fdsetup, but if you want more information about it, Rich Trouton at Der Flounder has a very thorough walk-through with a bunch of screenshots and excellent explanations. I'm definitely keeping this one in Pinboard for the inevitable day when I want or need to use fdsetup. I'm also glad to have a more low-level tool for working with FileVault. I had written previously about the "hoops" which were necessary to disable certain users from being able to unlock the computer with FileVault. That process is now a lot easier.

But wait, there's more!