Mac OS X 10.5 Password Reset Secret

This is not something that every Mac user will need. I also want to stress early on, if you do not know what you are doing in the Apple command line, please do not attempt this. There are some users who will only want to reset passwords and perform other user account functions using the GUI that Mac OS X 10.5 provides in the system configuration app. Now, that being said, who needs to know how to reset the admin password on their own Mac computer running Mac OS 10.5?

The short answer was Me. I purchased an Apple Mac Mini on an eBay auction a while ago. The machine came from a lot that the seller had purchased. They promised that the machine would boot up, but without a monitor to test, they did not know much else. I put in a low bid and won the Mac Mini. When the machine arrived, they were right. It booted up correctly and I was able to start tooling around with the pre-installed Mac OS X 10.5 Snow Leopard, which was awesome!

I ran into problems when I wanted to update software or install new apps. When I was prompted for the password, I tried many variations of the users name, password hint and of course some commonly used passwords. Much to my dismay, I had a working Mac Mini, but could not really do much with it. This is why I started looking for other ways to reset the password on the machine, no there was not any malicious intent, just needed to get my computer to a usable state. I was told that if I had the original install discs I could simply put it in and then boot from it to reset the admin password, but of course these did not come with the computer I had bought.

Here is the fast and easy way to reset your Mac Administrator Password:

Step 1 - Boot into single user mode (press Command-S at power on)

Step 2 - Type fsck -fy and hit enter (this will assure the disk integrity before we begin)

Step 3 - Type mount -uw / (this mounts the file system so we can work with it)

Step 4 - Type launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist (more files that must be loaded to use)

Step 5 - Type dscl . -passwd /Users/username password (you will put the admin user name and password in place of those words in this command)

-If you are not sure who the admin is or what the user name is of the admin, just type ls /Users to see a list of all user accounts on the system.

I must admit, I was about a second away from spending some serious cash on an OS disc, when I really did not need one. I just needed to know how to slide past the Mac OS X 10.5 security.

Now that I know how easy it is, this seems a little too easy and this very well may be a security hole that gets plugged in the next update of the OS from Apple. However, until then, enjoy!

For some Mac owners, you may simply need to perform a standard password reset. This process is really simple, but you do need to know where to go in your Mac settings to perform this action. That and of course you need to know your current password to have the proper permissions to reset the password.If you are wanting to change the password you already are using on your Mac OS X and beyond, check out this article in the Apple Knowledge Base on how to reset your OS X password and you will have it reset in no time at all.

The information on Apple's site is usually very helpful unless you run into a strange situation like I did with my Mac Mini running Snow Leopard. You may want to bookmark the knowledge base because it can be a great resource for most Mac and OS X related issue.