Creating Guest Account Crashes System Preferences

I'm having hard time reproducing this problem and would appreciate additional information. If someone experiences system hang when enabling guest account after migration please provide following:

a) Was guest account enabled before migration?

b) Open terminal and type following:

dscl . -list /users

Is there a Guest user listed in the output?

c) If there is, type:

dscl . -read /users/Guest

provide output (except JPEGPhoto part)

d) Open /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app and look for system keychain. Is there a com.apple.loginwindow.guest-account entry ?

Maxym,

are you from Cupertion?

I will give you an answer to your points:

a) yes, I think so, but I am not sure anymore.
At least it was not ticked after the migration.
b) yes, there is a guest user
c) here is the output:


dscl . -read /users/guest
dsAttrTypeNative:_guest: true
dsAttrTypeNative: writershint: guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writersjpegphoto: guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writersLinkedIdentity: guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writerspasswd: guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writerspicture: guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writersrealname: guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writersUserCertificate: guest
AppleMetaNodeLocation: /Local/Default
AuthenticationAuthority: ;ShadowHash; ;Kerberosv5;;guest@LKDC:SHA1.6A254FA712CCC930B29A78B64A7A5627039ABA24;LKDC:SHA1 .6A254FA712CCC930B29A78B64A7A5627039ABA24;
AuthenticationHint:
GeneratedUID: FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAA000000C9
<
<div class="jive-quote">
NFSHomeDirectory: /Users/Guest
Password: ******
Picture:
/Library/User Pictures/Sports/Baseball.tif
PrimaryGroupID: 201
RealName: Gast-Account
RecordName: guest
RecordType: dsRecTypeNative:users
UniqueID: 201
UserShell: /bin/bash
<

d) I opened keychain and there were two keychain items with that name, one from 2007 and one from 2009. I tried to have a look at the password (I think the earlier one). Now the keychain application stalled and had to be force quit. Now I can not start any new applications. So I will have to restart the computer.

e) Ok, the earlier keychain item seems to be a culprit; I restarted, logged into my Administrator account and deleted this keychain item.

Please keep in mind, that I have originally fixed this issue by following the given advices in this thread.

ps: it would be good to explain, what these terminal codes mean. What information will you get about my computer system? (always a bit careful when trusting another person with these terminal things, sorry).

thanks for the information!

These questions (and your answers) do not reveal any private/personal data or any computer specific information. They just to help me understand in what state your system was when you encountered this problem.

My situation is very similar: I tried enabling the Guest account by checking "Allow guests to log into this computer" on my iMac. I then transferred all user account information over to the MacBook (both 10.5.5), and get the same lock up. I'm able to use programs that were already running when the box was checked, but no other programs after that will open, and a hard reboot is necessary to return the system to normal. Force Quit will not fix it, and Relaunch Finder is also unsuccessful.

a) No; There was a guest account, but only "Allow guests to connect to shared folders" was checked.
b) Yes
c)
dsAttrTypeNative:_guest: true
dsAttrTypeNative: writershint: Guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writersjpegphoto: Guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writersLinkedIdentity: Guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writerspasswd: Guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writerspicture: Guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writersrealname: Guest
dsAttrTypeNative: writersUserCertificate: Guest
AppleMetaNodeLocation: /Local/Default
AuthenticationAuthority: ;ShadowHash; ;Kerberosv5;;Guest@LKDC:SHA1.CAACDB6555DABD198D6D7E641B686F895F496ECE;LKDC:SHA1 .CAACDB6555DABD198D6D7E641B686F895F496ECE;
AuthenticationHint:
GeneratedUID: FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAA000000C9
[JPEGPhoto part]
NFSHomeDirectory: /Users/Guest1
Password: ******
Picture:
/Library/User Pictures/Animals/Butterfly.tif
PrimaryGroupID: 201
RealName:
Guest Account
RecordName: Guest
RecordType: dsRecTypeNative:users
UniqueID: 201
UserShell: /bin/bash

d) Yes

I got this data after trying the steps above from izidor, however, I did not reboot after changing guest1 into guest in the Advanced Options, even though it said you must restart the computer for the changes to take affect.

I hope this provides some more useful information for your troubleshooting.

It seems if you do actually restart prior to checking the box, it will work. I did a reboot, went back into system preferences, checked the box, and it did not lock up this time.

Is there a way to "Allow guests to log into this computer" without using the System Preferences? (Using a shell script or Terminal command, for example?) We'd like to do this for several dozen of our laptops...

Thanks,
Nik

I just ran into the same problem. I am using 10.5.6 and I migrated from a PPC iMac to an Intel iMac. The guest account was enabled on the PPC iMac. When migration finished the Guest account was disabled but would not create (caused system to crash as described in these postings).

I followed the procedure to correct the problem with one minor tweak. When changing the name of the new Guest account from Guest1 to Guest I also had to change the directory name to Guest. If I did not the problem was still there. Perhaps the change happened because of the newer version of OSX. After completion I deleted the user Guest1 folder from the Users folder to clean up.

I also found a useful short cut to rebooting when in the hung state. Do a "Restart…" from Apple menu then using "Force Quit…" on the System Preference stop the crashed enable guest user. Once this has happened then the restart will resume by itself. Make sure the restart is the first thing you do - whatever this first action is will happen once the system preferences has been killed.

I was also having some problems with the guest account on some computers and if anyone can find the terminal operations to enable the guest account, I'd really appreciate it.

-Nik (not the same person as above, I promise)

You are a genius. I've just spent most of the weekend migrating my wife's iBook to a new iMac and resolve every problem except for the guest account issue. I didn't think I could go through another erase, reinstall, migration. This is important because my son wants to use the iMac but we want him to have to log in as a guest with parental controls. Thanks so much for posting this. My migration is now complete. I can move on to other, more vexing, non-Apple problems.