[Salty]

And by needs, I mean I know Apple will never ever create this, and it would be derided by the entire security industry.

But I am currently stuck in the basement of my sister's house, in a town that is an 8 hour drive away from the city where I live. And my sister has somehow managed to completely broked her "office computer" which is a Mac mini that is supposed to be where she stores all of her data for her small business. (Which if she lost would be a serious legal problem.

Somehow she managed to make it so that Mavericks (because God forbid anyone in my family run a software update on their computer!) is perpetually asking for Keychain passwords, which of course she's forgotten the password for, and somehow it's not the user account password. It's literally constantly having pop ups asking for passwords and they will not go away. I feel like I'm using a messed up Windows machine. And I have no idea why OS X would keep asking for these passwords if it knows the user doesn't know them!

So basically I've created a second admin account, and I've had to boot strap the permissions of her user account to give me access. Only changing the permissions of the enclosed items only mostly works. (Screw you Finder!) So i can't even drag and drop them reliably to a new user account. And of course ideally I'd just sit here and manually hit okay on the fact that it won't transfer a few files. But I need to sleep before my plane at 10 AM back to Winnipeg.

And really what I should just be doing is telling my sister that her computer is screwed, and she's a complete idiot for not telling me about this when I got in on the 23rd instead of at 10 PM tonight. But the problem is that my Mom will then whine and complain because she doesn't get that my sister is an irresponsible awful person, who's incapable of taking responsibility for any of her own screw ups.

Where was I going? I'm really tired right now.

But seriously, why can't OS X just have a God mode that's able to be turned on by an admin account on consumer grade hardware. Heck sell me a $50 super key at the Apple store that when I plug it into the USB port the Mac can know that I'm not an idiot. And just let me reset passwords, and bypass permissions problems, and not constantly have OS X ask me to authenticate things and make me go the long way around fixing a permissions problem.

Sigh. I hate Christmas.

[FireWire]

Would enabling and booting as the Root user do what you want?

[Doc HM]

Isn't root essentially that. Also why not just bin the whole keychain (delete from library) and start a new one? Easier than creating a new user and hacking a migration. Keychain is always doing this sort of password forgetting rubbish.

[Spheric Harlot]

Really? I do remember the issue from way back when (Snow Leopard?), but I haven't had keychain issues in quite a few years, now.

[Waragainstsleep]

I've been seeing keychain issues more lately. Its supposed to require the old user password if you are forced to reset the user password from another account or utility, but sometimes even if you know the right password it keeps popping up.
I worked out that on one machine it did this on, it launched one pop up for every item in the damn keychain. So I was using the correct password and it was accepting it, I just had to do it 60+ times to get past them all. PITA but simple.

[andi*pandi]

We have this issue at work when the network passwords change (lol windows network mac user) and the keychain gets confused. Frequently have to ditch and make a new one.

[ghporter]

An issue with Keychain itself should be simple to fix; trash the current one and build a new one. Setting the Keychain password to the USER password, may prevent more issues as well. You might even lock her out of Admin and make her a regular user to keep her from goobering up more stuff. Can Admin lock Keychain passwords so users can't change them? I'd do that too.

Yes, I'm saying protect your sister from herself, and not just for domestic harmony. Fixing the main issue with her computer should keep more problems from cropping up because she dinks around with the machine, (which should keep her out of court/jail, and keep you from having more domestic drama).

In my experience, a lot of people who seem scatterbrained and irresponsible are actually overwhelmed by what they're doing. That she forgot to mention the problem until later is a big indication that this may be your sister's case. Simplify what she should do to maintain her computer to some basic "every Wednesday, do X" kinds of things - and set her calendar to remind her of them - and she may be able to just pick up from there.

Besides, getting things sorted out for her makes you the Family Hero for the season, and there's a non-zero possibility that it may help her make permanent changes. Here's hoping!

[Salty]

In the end I trashed the whole user Library from another Admin account and reset the password in system prefs through it.

Such a nightmare. I did that because after a few attempts to fix it from within Keychain Access, I was furious. Plus all the password pop ups really had me agitated. I tried just trashing the keychain folder in Library but something didn't work. (Totally could have been my fault though, I literally was losing my mind. Especially since she asked me to sort things out late at night before she knew I'd be leaving in the morning.

[ghporter]

I'm glad you got it taken care of. Did you take away her crayons the way I suggested? Not that I'm catty that way, but it's gonna happen again if she doesn't use, or have enforced on her, some sort of user discipline.

[Laminar]

Wrong forum.