Mac OS X: About Keychain First Aid 1.0

The Keychain First Aid utility enables you to verify or repair your keychain configuration.

Keychain First Aid 1.0
Download Requirements Operating System Mac OS X 10.1 through 10.2.x Software N/A Hardware N/A		Download Help For help with downloading, see Knowledge Base Document 75098 "Help: Downloading Software License Agreement All software available from this document is governed by the terms of the software license agreement included with Mac OS X. By using or downloading this software you accept the terms of the software license agreement.

Language	Version	Release Date	Read Me	Software
English Only	1.0	2002-11-14		101 K

English

About Keychain First Aid 1.0

You may use Keychain First Aid to resolve issues in which:

• A user's .Mac password is not retained in Internet preference pane, as described in technical document 107097, "Mac OS X 10.2: Won't Save .Mac Password".
• Mail and iChat could continue to prompt users for their password after saving it in the keychain.
• A user could be unexpectedly prompted to unlock the keychain after changing account information or Home directory location.
• Duplicate Mail passwords could appear in the keychain, as described in technical document 106546, "Mac OS X 10.1: Re-enter Mail Password After Upgrade".
• Multiple references to the same keychain could appear in the Keychain Access application.
• Applications are unable to retrieve items from a keychain file located on a network volume.
• Saved passwords could not be read if they were created or modified by certain pre-release versions of Jaguar.
• A Keychain dialog can sometimes prompt for permission to decrypt a "(null)" item.

Note: Issues above may be rare or intermittent and may not be experienced by all users.

System requirements

• Mac OS X 10.1 to 10.2.8
  
  Note: For Mac OS X 10.3 or later, Keychain First Aid is already built into the Keychain Access application. See article 152252 for more information.

Installation

You install Keychain First Aid simply by copying it from its disk image to your hard disk. You could do that this way:

1. Open the Keychain First Aid.dmg file that you downloaded. This mounts the disk image file as a disk in the Computer list of volumes.
2. Click the Finder icon in the Dock.
3. Choose Computer from the Go menu.
4. Open the Keychain First Aid disk.
5. Drag the Keychain First Aid icon to any location on your hard disk. The /Applications/Utilities/ folder is recommended.

Note: If desired, you may use the utility from the disk image without installing it on your hard disk.

How to use

1. Open the Keychain First Aid utility.
2. Enter your Mac OS X login name and password.
3. Choose either the Verify or Repair option.
4. Click the Start button.

If you are not an Admin user, you would be prompted to authenticate as an Admin user before you would be able to repair another user's keychain. Logs can be saved to disk for further troubleshooting by choosing Save Log As from the File menu.

Note for advanced users

Keychain First Aid initially assumes that you want "factory default" behavior: a keychain that is automatically unlocked for you at login, and which never locks until you log out. However, users familiar with the Keychain Access utility may have chosen to create several keychains, enabled automatic locking, and/or chosen a different keychain password than the one used for login. You can modify the behavior of Keychain First Aid to better accomodate your customized configuration by choosing options in the Expert tab of the Preferences panel. Unless you are sure an option does not apply to your setup, it's recommended that you leave all the options checked.