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Administrator Password Problem

C

Cosmic.LoopHole

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 11, 2012
14
0
Hi there, I recently bought a new iMac 10.7.3 and I have only 1 problem with it, I don't have full control of it. Basically, my account is managed by Parental Controls by someone who doesn't even live with me and my family. I know this would all be resolved if I reboot the entire computer but I can't really risk that without the disk which the guy has in his possession. Is there a way for a Managed Account to be able to find its way into the Administrator's account? Any help would be appreciated :)
 
Boot into single user mode and run "passwd [whatever the short username for the admin is, i.e. the one without spaces in]" then choose a new password and hit enter. You might have to confirm it. When that's done, type "halt" to shutdown and boot up as normal and you can now log into the admin account with your new password ;)
 
Thanks for that information :) I'm sorry for being such a newb but, what do you mean about single user mode?
 
You are a Genius! Thank you for this information. I can finally attempt to go to different websites without the Parental Controls popup to interfere. :)
 
Does it make any difference if the admin short name has a space in it?

I attempted it the short name without including the space and it didn't accept it. One step away from freedom and it is the most complicated part :confused:
 
Short usernames do not have spaces. If you go to Macintosh HD > Users you can see a list of users on the computer, including the admin. All those folders will be named after the user's short username, so get the admin's one from there.
 
Found 2. I shall try them both. :)

----------

I think I'm doing it wrong.

First: I shut down computer

Second: I turn it on while holding "Command + S"

Third: Then its, "passwd <shortname> <newpassword>

Fourth: Finally I do "Halt"

Is that the right sequence? Or am I doing everything wrong?
 
You want to type "passwd [short name]" then wait until it prompts you for a new password, then confirm it if it asks you to do so. Once that has completed, you then type in "halt" to shut your system down. Then boot as normal.
 
What exactly did you type? Don't include the brackets. As an example, if your username on the computer is cloophole, you'd type the following:
Code: 
passwd cloophole

Note also that you won't see the cursor move while you enter the password, but it will be accepting your input.

jW
 
I've typed in:

passwd <shortname>

After that, it states that the daemon has found an error.

Thats all that happens.
 
Right, let's try something a little different. Get back into single user mode and just type "passwd" then set a new password. This will be the new password for the root user. After that, type "reboot" and wait for the computer boot back up as normal.

Now, log in as your normal user, open up Terminal, and type "login root" then enter the password you just set. Now type "passwd [the admin's short username]". This should now let you set a new password without any errors.

After you've done this, you might want to disable the root user just for security reasons. You can follow this guide from Apple to do so (except obviously you want to click "Disable Root User" instead of "Enable Root User").
 
New Steps (Based on what always happen):

1. Command + S
2. passwd
3. The daemon encountered an error processing request. (x2)
4. passwd icecream
5. The daemon encountered an error processing request. (x2)
6 passwd icecream lemon
7. passwd [-i infosystem] -[location]] [-u authname] [ name]

infosystem:
file
NIS
OpenDirectory
PAM

location (for infosystem):
file location is path to file (default is /etc/master.passwd)
NIS location is NIS domainname
OpenDirectory location is directory node name
PAM location is not used

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's all that keeps popping up every single time. Is that a good or bad thing?
 
Cosmic.LoopHole said:
... a new iMac 10.7.3... ... I can't really risk that without the disk which the guy has in his possession...
Click to expand...

First of all you don't have a disc with Lion, your iMac should have the Lion Recovery Partition preinstalled. From there you can access Terminal or wipe and reload the machine. Assuming your story is true it sounds like you bought a used iMac from someone who didn't wipe it before handing it over to you. It'd really be best to go ahead and just reload it to get rid of whatever he may have in his Admin account. If the previous owner had for some reason deleted the recovery partition you can still use Lion Internet Recovery by holding cmnd-R at boot and booting to Apple's servers to wipe and reinstall Lion.

Having said all of that it sounds more likely that your parents bought an iMac and put parental controls on your account intentionally. Why else would you be reluctant to wipe the whole machine?
 
Blipp said:
Having said all of that it sounds more likely that your parents bought an iMac and put parental controls on your account intentionally. Why else would you be reluctant to wipe the whole machine?
Click to expand...

Either way it doesn't matter, parental controls are useless since it's so easy to get root if you have physical access to the machine, just like how the parental internet filtering on phones is easy to get around if you know how to use proxies :p

OP, if you run "mount -uw /" to mount the filesystem in single user mode before using passwd, it should work fine. So you can actually use "passwd [admin account]" in single user mode without messing with the root password if you use that command first :)

If that still doesn't work, try booting into the recovery partition and running a Terminal from it then entering "resetpassword" and selecting the admin account :)
 
Which version of OSX is this?
For example, buy the retail disk of snow leopard, which is 29 bucks.
This is the FULL RETAIL.
You can upgrade from tiger to snow leopard,
you can upgrade from leopard to snow leopard,
you can use it to fix snow leopard things (such as admin stuff)
and you can fresh install "as if first time" snow leopard.

And, upgrade from snow leopard to LION, if you buy lion in mac app store afterwards.

29 bucks, almost a steal.
 
Well, this computer here is a Mac OS X Lion computer that has recently installed the 10.7.3 on. I personally wanted any Snow Leopard computer but the guy went and got this Lion, claiming it was better. To tell the truth, I honestly dislike this computer all because there is a cheap time restriction that prevents me from completing my other homework. The guy is a my "family's friend" who I believe is a sociopath who should be locked up.

Either way, back to the current problem, I tried to get into Recovery mode for this computer by restarting and doing "Command + R". That didn't work for some reason. Any other ideas?
 
Did you try mounting the filesystem in single user mode before running the passwd command as I suggested?
 
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