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How *not* to change account passwords in 10.3
Authored by: Nem on Aug 24, '06 10:26:26AM

Hmm.. I've been thinking about this some more. This was a bad idea on your (and Apple's part). No UNIX system stores your password as plaintext for recall, not even OS X. Everything is encrypted using that password. If it decrypts something correctly, then it is the correct password, otherwise, it isn't the right password and you can't log in/etc.

I'm guessing the bullets were just placeholders of some sort and that your password is now some thing like '7 wacky characters that you can't type' followed by what you added.

I'm running 10.4, so I can't reproduce this (the password dialog no longer has placeholder bullets). However, go into your new account, go the System Prefs, Accounts page and just select the bullets in the change password field. Copy the text (Cmd-C) and then open a Terminal window and do a paste (Cmd-V) and see what it spits out. I'm guessing you'll see 7 boxes, which means they are characters that Terminal doesn't know how to display.

I'd call Apple if I were you, and see if they can straighten out this mess. It's possible to reset the password on your account and get Filevault updated, but I'm guessing you'll need Administrative privs and still have to use the GUI, but they'll have a better idea of what's actually going on here and how to fix it.

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Nem W. Schlecht
http://geekmuse.net/



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