Pick of the Week - Nov 10 [Show all picks]
Path Finder 5 - A feature-laden Finder replacement
Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsFAQHeadlinesRSS
12,000 hints and counting!


Click here to return to the '10.5: Reset a user's password in single user mode' hint
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
10.5: Reset a user's password in single user mode
Authored by: lolopb on Mon, Apr 28 2008 at 6:50PM PDT
Hmmm this article does only delete a part of a user's record, the AuthAuthority value, in fact. This article is useful if you have a user created in 10.2.x and migrated in 10.5.

Beginning with 10.3, Apple changed the way passwords are stored for more security. Before 10.3, passwords were stored in the NetInfo database, in the users entries, using the unsecure crypt hash. Starting with 10.3, passwords are using stronger hashes (SHA-1 and beginning with 10.4 a Salted-SHA1) and they are no longer stored in the users entries but in /private/var/db/shadow/hash, in a file which is named with each user's GeneratedUID (not the old unix UID, be careful). This folder is only accessible to root and the AuthAuthority attribute tells the system which kind of password you have.

So, if your user was created before 10.3 and you have migrated it, you may want to do what this KB article explains.

[ Reply to This | # ]