Have you tried this?

[techne]

After the last security update of Panther, I have to reboot. When the login window popped up I written my pass and althought I noticed I typed an aditional "y" keystroke, it logged in!!
I payed no attention but then when I executed Mail and Safari, Keyring kept asking me all my passwords.
Is it just me? I didn't clean install Panther else upgraded from 10.2.8. Check it out and let me know if it is happening to you too.

 

[shakespeare]

After every system update or security fix, the keyring will ask you all your passwords. This is normal behaviour.

As for your ability to log in despite the extra "y" on your password: that is due to the fact that the system only bothers to check/save the first 6 (or is it 8?) characters in your password. I set my password to be twelve characters long before I realised this fact. I now only bother typing in the first few characters, and it logs me in just the same.

Try it. If the mistake is at the end of your password, it won't matter - only the beginning is what's important.

 

[skymaXimus]

Thats crazy ... I never knew that. I wonder why they do it this way?

 

[daveL]

Originally posted by shakespeare
After every system update or security fix, the keyring will ask you all your passwords. This is normal behaviour.

As for your ability to log in despite the extra "y" on your password: that is due to the fact that the system only bothers to check/save the first 6 (or is it 8?) characters in your password. I set my password to be twelve characters long before I realised this fact. I now only bother typing in the first few characters, and it logs me in just the same.

Try it. If the mistake is at the end of your password, it won't matter - only the beginning is what's important.

Actually, don't you have to re-validate your keychain after each login?

And the password limit is 8 characters, although I do believe you can change that somewhere.

 

[bankshot]

Prior to Panther, Mac OS X only used the old Unix crypt algorithm to store encrypted passwords. This algorithm only used the first 8 characters of the password and discarded all of the rest. If you did an upgrade install or archive/install, your old encrypted password was brought along to Panther untouched. It still only uses the first 8 characters of whatever you type, and thus it will let you in regardless of anything typed after the 8th character.

But now Panther supports longer passwords (using md5 I think), and by default any new password is stored using the newer encryption. You can easily switch to the new password encryption in the Accounts preference pane. Just act like you're going to change your password (by typing into the Password and Verify boxes) but just retype the same password. You can verify that it works by going to the login window and trying to type extra characters. With the new password encryption, it won't authenticate.

 

[Raid]

I suggest you try it again... just to experiment

Originally posted by techne
After the last security update of Panther, I have to reboot. When the login window popped up I written my pass and althought I noticed I typed an aditional "y" keystroke, it logged in!!
I payed no attention but then when I executed Mail and Safari, Keyring kept asking me all my passwords.
Is it just me? I didn't clean install Panther else upgraded from 10.2.8. Check it out and let me know if it is happening to you too.

Well I was interested in trying this on my machine, so I set my password to greater than 8 characters and logged in typing the full new password. Everthing worked fine, so I restart and and try typing the first 8 chararters of my new password. While it did boot up, all my settings were switched back to the default settings (dock, startup apps, desktop, aqua interface... the whole bit)! Now in a bit of a panic I didn't check things like my mail, address book, or bookmarks in safari; but I logged back in and retyped the full password, and my settings came back!

If I get a little more brave, I'll do it again to check the above mentioned applications for my settings.

 

[daveL]

bankshot

Hmmm .... I'm running Panther, did a clean install and set up my accounts from scratch. I have a password that is more than 8 characters, but I can log in with only 8 being entered. Everything else appears normal after I log in.

 

[bankshot]

Re: bankshot

Originally posted by daveL
Hmmm .... I'm running Panther, did a clean install and set up my accounts from scratch. I have a password that is more than 8 characters, but I can log in with only 8 being entered. Everything else appears normal after I log in.

Interesting. Try this: open NetInfo Manager (in /Applications/Utilities), click on users and then on your username. Take a look at the passwd and authentication_authority fields. If it's the old encryption, you should see a random looking string of characters in passwd, and authentication_authority should be ;basic;. If it's the new, then the passwd should be ******** and authentication_authority should be ;ShadowHash;.

The new encryption shouldn't allow you to type in only 8 characters if the password is longer (it doesn't for me). But I can't imagine how you might have gotten the old encryption when setting up your account... unless the initial setup screens use the old encryption for some weird reason.