On Nov 15, 2008, at 3:26 PM, Al Poulin wrote:
> > 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. Why did you do this? Nothing changed on your machine that would require RP. > > > 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. That's because Repair Permissions borked the file. > > > Using the OS installer DVD, I could not restart from Admin with the C > key, ? If this is an issue the system is messed up, or your keyboard is malfunctioning. > 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. Your keyboard is acting up. This has happened to me a few times with the new keyboards, but I thought that since I was using them on older systems they weren't properly recognized. I got around that by sticking an old KB on and restarting,. > > > 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? I think you had a major keyboard fart, possibly > > Hmmm, does a log control access? secure.log records administrative access requests and results. if it cannot be written to things can be messed up, but all you changed was your own ability to read it, since root owns the processes that control it. > Where is the file that needed fixing? Not sure. > > Why couldn't I check secure.log? The secure.log SHOULD have -rw-r...permissions, root owns it. Since you're not root you need to have group -based rights to read it (admin) On my machine: the-pismo:~ johnson$ cd /private/var/log the-pismo:log johnson$ ls -l secure.log -rw-r----- 1 root admin 96182 Nov 15 14:26 secure.log File permissions are (simply put) -rwx rwx rwx and proceed from left to right: Owner-Group-World, the r stands for 'read', w for 'write' and x for 'execute' rights. When the file was -rw-r----- that meant the owner had read and write permissions, and the group had read permissions. Looking at my machine the owner of the file is root, and the group is admin (or administrative users) When Permissions "Repair" changed it to -rw------- that meant only root could read the file. An admin users rights to read the file derive from the group permissions, and since the group now had no rights, you couldn't read the file. This had NOTHING to do with the passwords being messed up..something else happened to cause that, and I'm not sure what...I've never run into this problem before. -- Bruce Johnson U of Az College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions don't have opinions, merely customs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 [email protected] 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
