How to stop/quit GlobalProtect in MacOS Monterey on a personal workstation?
Recently, My school will be sunsetting the Pulse VPN and introducing GlobalProtect VPN for accessing resources in school network.
I gave it a try and installed the GlobalProtect VPN. The connecting process is smooth and secured, since it requires Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) to authenticate the user. All seems good for now!
When I have done my school work and realised there is no way to disable/quit/stop the GlobalProtect VPN running from the background. From the user interface, it seems like it is intentionally to stop people from quitting/removing the program even while you are not using it.
My first thought was confused but thinking that I may kill the process from the force quit function on the operating system level. Oh, wait! I cannot even find the GlobalProtect VPN, how am I able to quit it?
Next, I went to the activity monitor to search for the “globalprotect” keyword.
There is only one process named “GlobalProtect” and to view the process detail, you may highlight the row and double click it.
The moment I clicked the quit button, the program restarted and became active again!
What a surprise! So now I am stuck in between accessing my homework without going to school vs allowing some program that cannot be terminated even while not using it to continue to log my activities on my personal computer!
Obviously, one of the solutions is to uninstall the GlobalProtect VPN and reinstall every time you want to use.
Luckily, there is another not-so-straight-forward way to stop GlobalProtect VPN from running into the background.
You can execute the command with root permission below and read the explanation.
sudo sed -i '' -e "s/true/false/g" /Library/LaunchAgents/com.paloaltonetworks.gp.pangpa.plistExplanation: Under
/Library/LaunchAgents, there is a file calledcom.paloaltonetworks.gp.pangpa.plist, we need to modify the 2 keywords,RunAtLoadandKeepAliveto be false. By doing this, This program will not run at start up time and it will disconnect after a certain amount of time.If you wish to use the keep alive function, you may keep the
KeepAliveparameter to be true by using editor.Notes: This solution may not work in a corporate laptop since you may not have administrator permission to change the file.
Lastly, If you want to quit the GlobalProtectVPN after completing your work on your personal laptop, simply shutdown or restart your laptop.
Tested on 30 Jan 2022
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