Fixing Killed: 9 Error on macOS

OpenShift macOS quarantine CLI oc kubectl security

2 min read | by Jordi Prats

When downloading and installing software downloaded from internet on macOS, you might encounter a frustrating "Killed: 9" error immediately after trying to run the binary. This issue is caused by macOS Gatekeeper security feature that quarantines downloaded files to protect against potentially malicious software.

In this case we are downloading the openshift-client from RedHat, but we won't be able to run it:

$ tar xzvf openshift-client-mac-arm64.tar.gz
x README.md
x oc
x kubectl
$ mv oc ../local/bin/
$ oc
Killed: 9

The "Killed: 9" error indicates that macOS has terminated the process due to security restrictions. This happens because the downloaded binary has been marked with the quarantine attribute by macOS, preventing it from executing. The system kills the process as a security measure since the binary wasn't signed by a recognized Apple developer or downloaded from the App Store.

To resolve this issue, you need to remove the quarantine attribute from the binary using the xattr command:

$ xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ../local/bin/oc

With the flag removed, we can now run the command as usual without being kille d:

$ oc
OpenShift Client
(...)

Posted on 21/07/2025

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