System Preferences "Lock" Question

[MacNewb721]

As the name indicates, I am a Mac Newb with a basic question. On my MBP, 10.5.4, when I click the lock under both the Security and the Sharing panels of System Preferences ("click lock to prevent future changes") I noticed that, upon restarting, these locks are opened again without me doing so. Also, the lock under the Accounts panel remains locked. Is this normal?

 

[deltaiscain]

I have the same problem. I also have it ticked to lock all system preferences panes, but it opens them all, except for Accounts.

 

[MacNewb721]

Bump. After restarting my MB, all the panes in System Preferences (except for "Accounts") were unlocked again. I checked the "Require password to unlock each System Preferenes pane" box under "Security", restarted my system, and all the panes remained locked. However, I noticed that under "Security", the "Use secure virtual memory" box was checked (I didn't check it myself).

Is this normal? Can anyone shed some light on this issue? Did I solve the problem? Should I be concerned? (The only two computers that use our home network are this MB and my g/f's Dell...)

 

[turqmelon]

On the right track

If you set to keep all preference panes locked, secure virtual memory activates. This is the setting that keeps the panes secure.

 

[larkost]

If you set to keep all preference panes locked, secure virtual memory activates. This is the setting that keeps the panes secure.

I don't believe that this is the case at all. I just enabled "Require a password to unlock..." on my machine and it die not touch secure virtual memory. I don't know where you would get the idea that these two were related.

Now to some real answers:

The reason that it would still be unlocked is that by default once you authorize your authorization lasts for a set amount of time (30 seconds I believe, but don't have 10.5 in front of me to check). If you want to change this then the setting is in: /etc/authorization. You are looking for "authenticate-admin*" in rules, and the timeout value in there.

And secure virtual memory is on on your MacBook Pro because Apple now defaults it to on on all laptops, and off on desktops (makes sense). This changed in one of the security updates, but I don't remember which one.

 

[Tanmay]

Finally found the solution that actually worked.

Follow the guide here to fix the issue