Uninstalling MSL

Window ▸ Remove MSL…, or msl uninstall in a terminal. Both build the same itemised list and remove the same things, so the two can never disagree about what MSL leaves behind.

The window shows the choice first — Keep my Linux or Remove everything — then every item with its size, and removes nothing until you have read it. Deleting your Linux asks again, with the instance count and the total.

What goes#

• MSL.app itself.
• The background service and the login items, stopped first.
• The Mac apps made for your Linux apps, in ~/Applications/MSL.
• MSL's caches, logs and saved window state.
• The msl, mslhd, mslgui and msl-applauncher programs.
• The Admin Portal's password and signing keys, and any encrypted containers, in /Users/Shared/MSL. Those are MSL's own records about who administers this Mac, not your Linux, so they go in both modes.
• An enrolled policy in /Library/Application Support/MSL.
• Things that are not files: Dock tiles for your Linux apps, the app's registration with macOS so it stops appearing in Spotlight and Launchpad, and the installer's receipt so a reinstall does its own work.

A few of those belong to the system, so macOS asks for your password once at the end. MSL finishes the job itself rather than printing a sudo rm -rf for you to paste — an uninstaller that stops and hands you a command has not finished.

If an instance is in an encrypted container and you are keeping your Linux, its disk is taken back out first. The key lives in /Users/Shared/MSL, which is about to go, and leaving a disk inside would make it permanently unreadable — see Protecting an image.

Running instances are shut down properly first - not hibernated, because a saved session with no MSL to restore it is worse than a clean power-off. Anything mounted in Finder is unmounted before that.

What stays#

• Every distro disk image, and everything inside it.
• Your instances, the accounts you made, and each instance's storage settings.
• Your custom images, in Custom Images.
• MSL's own settings, so a reinstall doesn't switch something back on that you switched off.

Under a policy#

An administrator can deny system.uninstall. The menu item is still there and the refusal says who decided and why, because hiding it would leave you hunting for something that is not there — see Reading a refusal.

Upgrading is not uninstalling#

To move to a newer MSL, just install it over the old one. The app and your Linux live in different places, so nothing is lost and there is no uninstall step. See The background service for why MSL restarts it after an update.

Removing all of it#

msl uninstall --everything, or the checkbox in the sheet, deletes the Linux side too - every image, instance and setting. It asks you to type a word first, the same one Removing an instance uses, because nothing here comes back.

msl uninstall --dry-run prints both lists and changes nothing.