Location Services are always disabled in Mac OS X Lion

Question

A simple location services program was working fine on my machine and suddenly stopped working. Upon further exploring the problem, I realized that some process has disabled location services in System Preferences » Security & Privacy » Privacy.

I checked Enable Location Services, but again it got disabled automatically.

After some research I found that it's not just my program, even built-in system functions are also failing because of this problem for example System Preferences » Date & Time » Time Zone failed to get the current location.

Every time I check Enable Location Services, I see the following error in the console logs:

16/10/12 11:23:15.636 AM [0x0-0x42042].com.apple.systempreferences: ERROR,Time,372059595.636,Function,"CLInternalSetLocationServicesEnabled",CLInternalSetLocationServicesEnabled failed
16/10/12 11:23:15.638 AM [0x0-0x42042].com.apple.systempreferences: STACK,Time,372059595.636,1   CoreLocation                        0x00007fff8f9957be CLInternalSetLocationServicesEnabled + 110

Notes:

• WiFi is on
• I didn't install iOS Simulator
• I use Xcode Version 4.5 (4G182)
• I use Boot Camp and made my MacBook Pro dual boot (Mac OS X Lion and Windows 7)
• I do only Mac development but not iOS

Answer 1

#!/bin/sh
launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locationd.plist

defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locationd Disabled -bool false 

then

launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locationd.plist

exit 0

Answer 2

I'm encountering the same issue in OSX 10.11 (El Capitan).

I found this post (https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=5336#responseChild65097). I ran the script within, and finally my Location Services were fixed.

#!/bin/bash

########################## SET SYSTEM TIME  ##################################################
#
# Written by Tim Kimpton
#
# using information from https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=5336
#
# If the machine is 5 minutes out of the kdc the machine will not bind to the domain.
#
# This script does the folling to ensure the time is correct
#
# 1. Unload the launch daemon used for location services
#
# 2. Get the hardware UUID of the machine and put it in the location services db
#
# 3. Enable location services
#
# 4. Correct permissions on the database file used for location services
#
# 5. Set the time zone to update the time automatically
#
# 6. Set the network time to on
#
# For information see https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=5336
###############################################################################################

######################### ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES #######################

# Get the Hardware UUID from system profiler
uuid=$(/usr/sbin/system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | grep "Hardware UUID" | cut -c22-57)

####################### DO NOT MODIFY BELOW THIS LINE #################

# Unload the launch daemon
/bin/launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locationd.plist

# Write the UUID to the hidden plist file and initialise it
/usr/bin/defaults write /var/db/locationd/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.locationd."$uuid" LocationServicesEnabled -int 1

# Enable Location Services
/usr/bin/defaults write /var/db/locationd/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.locationd.notbackedup."$uuid" LocationServicesEnabled -int 1

# Make sure the permissions on the database file is correct
/usr/sbin/chown -R _locationd:_locationd /var/db/locationd
/bin/launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locationd.plist

# Set time zone to update automatically
/usr/bin/defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.timezone.auto Active -bool true

# Set network time to on
/usr/sbin/systemsetup -setusingnetworktime on > /dev/null 2>&1

exit 0