On 20 inch aluminum Intel iMac 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running OS X 10.5.2, my account passwords failed to work in Admin and all Users on the afternoon of Nov 13.
I had gone into Admin to install a kids' game. This was a drag to the Macintosh HD and then I dragged to the Applications folder. For the first time since April, I ran Repair Disk Permissions which reported: 2008-11-13 15:49:23 -0500: Permissions differ on "private/var/log/ secure.log", should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r----- . I ran Repair Disk Permissions again, but the previous problem message did not reappear, and there were no new ones. I closed Disk Utility and launched OnyX v.1.9.3; my Admin password was rejected. With fast user switching to a User account, its password failed. Passwords failed for two other accounts. Still in Admin, and working a hunch that I could make a text change in "secure.log," I launched Console, highlighted "secure.log" and got a message saying I had no permission to see the log. I went into a Guest account which requires no password. Logging out of Guest got me the login window which showed Admin and one User account running, but I still could not log in. Using the OS installer DVD, I could not restart from Admin with the C key, nor could I see a way to eject the DVD. Looking back, I did not try using the on/off switch to restart. At that point, I just wanted to keep things running. Going back to the Guest account, I could eject the DVD. Still in Guest and reinserting the DVD with the C key down, I got the DVD installer window for the first time, but the Macintosh HD was still the boot disk. In Startup Disk, the DVD was grayed out. I forget how I fiddled around, but I used the Admin password twice to get the machine to restart on the DVD from the Guest account. After using the DVD's Utilities>Reset Password on each account, all was well. I ran the maintenance scripts (cron jobs) with OnyX. However, I still could not open "secure.log." With several attempts on Nov 13, that log was grayed out, and I shut down for the night. Early on Nov 14, "secure.log" was still grayed out. Later, I opened the log which showed this in the first line: Nov 14 21:26:51 Macintosh newsyslog[635]: logfile turned over due to size>100K What happened? Why did the passwords stop working? Hmmm, does a log control access? Where is the file that needed fixing? Why couldn't I check secure.log? Thanks, Al Poulin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Low End Mac's iMac List, a group for those using G3, G4, G5, and Intel Core iMacs as well as Apple eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to imaclist@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
