Passwords on OSX

Sorry to have been so long in getting back to you. Thank you, gsarff and homealone - I think you're both close to describing some of the things that have been happening.

However, now that I'm thinking a bit more rationally, I have to say that in the majority of occasions it is not Mail.app that is asking for my password, but the keychain. This happens whenever I launch Mail or log in again (after someone else has been lossed in on the same machine).

But, just to make things worse, since reporting the frustrations and annoyances above - someone showed me how to 'adjust' the keychain settings - and it now asks for my password every time I launch Safari as well (more or less everytime I log on) - which has never happened before!

I have no idea what to do now, as any meddling with the keychain seems to make things worse. All I can think is that a clean install - when I get around to upgrading to 10.3.3 may do the trick. What do you think?
 
One quick thing to make sure of before you go to the bother of installing over again - is your keychain password the same as your account password? If not, change them to be the same thing...
 
Porteus even though you have been using OS X for a couple of years now, it sounds as if you lack some understanding of the fundamental rationale of Unix and OS X. Admittedly OS X is far more sophisticated than OS 9 could have ever been and that sophistication can lead to more underlying complexity. That complexity is part of the cost paid for the incredible stability, flexibility, and functionality that is inherent in OS X.

If you have not already done so I strongly urge you to get a copy either of David Pogue's Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition or Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Panther Edition and read it - cover to cover. Either is about as close to being enjoyable to read as any technical book ever is and will give you more understanding of not only what is going on under the hood but at least some feel for why it is going on.
 
[/QUOTE]BTW I have already reinstalled OSX after the initial install in order to change my admin short name - this seemed to be the only way to do this?
[/QUOTE]
You could have created a new user with the short name you prefered then delete the suspect user account. Would take 5 mins to set up compared to a couple of hours to reinstall system.
 
I dont know if you have achived this allready but from your original description if you want to be able to log in with out passwords all you do is delete everything in the password fields! then when you log on a list of useres comes up u click on you thats it done! when you are installing softwear it ask you for an admin. password you just leave the field blank and click OK easy! sorry if you have all ready solved that problem. As for the keychain problem I dont realy know. but keychain does bother me some time when I click the auto sign in buttons in things like MSN mensenger it comes up asking my if msn has permision to acces my keychain I click always allow but it persist every so often mind you this happened all the time in OS 9.2 I'm so glad we have OS X 9.2 spent more time crashing than anything else when ever you tried to multi-task!
 
ex0dus, the shortname problem was complicated by the fact that the account with the long shortname was the adminastrative and only account. As I understand it, you cannot delete an adminastrative account. I would never consider using a non admin account for the sake of practicality. That's why it was a problem for me! You'd imagine that there would be a simpler way though?
 
porteous said:
Sorry to have been so long in getting back to you. Thank you, gsarff and homealone - I think you're both close to describing some of the things that have been happening.

However, now that I'm thinking a bit more rationally, I have to say that in the majority of occasions it is not Mail.app that is asking for my password, but the keychain. This happens whenever I launch Mail or log in again (after someone else has been lossed in on the same machine).

But, just to make things worse, since reporting the frustrations and annoyances above - someone showed me how to 'adjust' the keychain settings - and it now asks for my password every time I launch Safari as well (more or less everytime I log on) - which has never happened before!

I have no idea what to do now, as any meddling with the keychain seems to make things worse. All I can think is that a clean install - when I get around to upgrading to 10.3.3 may do the trick. What do you think?
Click to expand...

You may want to try, if you haven't already done so, deleting any files in your (User Folder)/Library/Keychains/ folder. Or archive them first to back them up and then delete them. Probably just login.keychain. The next time you log in it should ask you to setup a new one. You will have to enter in passwords again that were stored, but this may fix Keychain from asking for your password all the time. I've seen this problem happen on my cousins computer when the Apple store entered her password wrong and we had to reset the Admin password. Deleting the file fixed everything.
 
homealone said:
ex0dus, the shortname problem was complicated by the fact that the account with the long shortname was the adminastrative and only account. As I understand it, you cannot delete an adminastrative account. I would never consider using a non admin account for the sake of practicality. That's why it was a problem for me! You'd imagine that there would be a simpler way though?
Click to expand...

You should be able to delete an administrator account if the account you are deleting it from has administrator privilages because I did when I had the same problem.
 
Porteus, have you tried looking in the Keychain First Aid options under the expert tab. If not then make sure to tick the "Set login keychain as default" and "Change login keychain settings(keychain will always remain unlocked)". This is what I did and I now never get asked for passwords from keychain. I have attached an image of my settings. Sorry if you have already tried this and it hasn't worked. You could also try changing your password in the main system preference as this should reset the keychain with the new password, this has worked on a previous Jaguar system of mine when I had similar problems to you.
 

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However, now that I'm thinking a bit more rationally, I have to say that in the majority of occasions it is not Mail.app that is asking for my password, but the keychain. This happens whenever I launch Mail or log in again (after someone else has been lossed in on the same machine).

But, just to make things worse, since reporting the frustrations and annoyances above - someone showed me how to 'adjust' the keychain settings - and it now asks for my password every time I launch Safari as well (more or less everytime I log on) - which has never happened before!

I have no idea what to do now, as any meddling with the keychain seems to make things worse. All I can think is that a clean install - when I get around to upgrading to 10.3.3 may do the trick. What do you think?
Click to expand...


This sounds like a very similar problem I had with that keychain and apps asking for passwords (on installs as simple as internet plugins). I threw out the preference files, repaired permissions, use keychain first aid and nothing helped. It turned out (that friend who uses Macs in his business) suggested a very simple fix. All I did was go to my account settings, change my admin password, log out, log back in and then change my password back to my original. That fixed my password problems. Key chain first aid did not even catch that problem.

I hope this helps you. Good luck.
 
ex0dus said:
You should be able to delete an administrator account if the account you are deleting it from has administrator privilages because I did when I had the same problem.
Click to expand...

Thanks ex0dus. A little logic goes a long way... I thought that I had tried that? (Can't quite remember) But if worked for you, then I'll try it out the next time the need arises or I have some spare time. :D
 
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