Can't Unlock Preference Panes

"sudo killall securityd" did nothing for me. I know rebooting solves the problem. Looking into CAC_KEY or some other permanent solution. Anyone know if there are open-source programs that do this for free or at least cheaper than $200?

Could be a corrupted preference plist.

You can drag the entire Preferences folder onto the desktop and log out/in and see if things work as normal. If they do then you know that one of the plist files in the Preferences folder you dragged out onto the desktop is broken.

You can put them back in large groups until the problem reappears. This way you can "trap" the broken file.

You might also try downloading and re-installing the combo update for your system.

Download it directly from the Apple site, not from software update.

http://support.apple.com/downloads/#macosandsoftware

nsplayr,

Try adding -9 to make sure securityd is really killed:

sudo killall -9 securityd

cackey is free and works pretty well, including support for Firefox and mail encrypt/decrypt. You can get it from forge.mil (need a cac-enabled machine, sort of ironic) or from militarycac.com who hosts it "in the open" at http://goo.gl/KFiyt

Also Thursby softwares pkcard is supported by a professional company with lots of experience in this area. It's only $30 and is fully functional but as far as I know doesn't do anything to add cac support to Firefox, if that matters to you. It's page is here: http://goo.gl/SE5nT

Neither of these solutions will stop the security lockout problem, that's an error at the OS level. Only a complete CAC package like the $200 one I mentioned before will fix that. It might be fixed in 10.8, I'm waiting for beta software from Thursby so I can check and see. cackey currently does NOT install on 10.8, but they have a few months to fix that...

@nerowolfe

For most of us, unfortunately, this is an issue directly related to token-based authentication in the OS, which gets turned on when we use a third-party cac enabler. Apparently there are still some vestiges of the old system in there, and they get confused.

The behavior is exactly the same on a freshly installed system, so deleting plist files isn't going to do the trick.

If anyone is having this problem and NOT using a CAC, then it's definitely worth trying.

Thanks, I'll try this. In the meantime I just rebooted...didn't have much open and it takes all of 10 seconds (really) on my brand-new MBA.

I'm using chrome to access my .mil webmail FWIW, I have no need for it to work in firefox. Everything works great using my CAC and I can access my email just fine, but the **** preferences lock thing is annoying when you, say, want to add a printer or change the energy saver settings or any of 100 other things...

Hopefully it's fixed in 10.8 when it comes out this summer...

Thank you! Worked like a charm 🙂

Bump.

I have seen this since I installed a driver for my iKey 4000 (BSecPKForMacintoshVer1.0.4). After reboot I can unlock the System Preferences, but right after the iKey is inserted and appears in Keychain the lock gets locked and is unlockable (clicking does nothing). Killing securityd makes System Preferences usable, but all other apps that use keychain have to be restarted too, so it's like a reboot. I will report this as bug.

The good news is driver that this makes the iKey work in Lion (althought it is really slow, from insertion to appearing in Keychain it sometimes takes 2 minutes). Also Firefox is happy with the libsfntpkcs11 in

/usr/local/bundle/sfntPKCS.bundle/Contents/MacOS/libsfntpkcs11

Thanks for the CAC analysis, Stephen. I had the no-unlock issue (on 10.7.3), and since I am using a third party CAC (SuisseID in my case) it appears the libraries were loaded upon first use and remained in place. Rebooting solved the problem for me: Now opening the lock works again.

Well, I finally backed up my files in Time Machine, just in case, and reinstalled Lion via Command R. Didn't even need the backup; my data and apps were right where I left them. Very simple and problem solved. Everything has been working fine again for a few weeks now. Should have done this months ago!

@nsplayr, I do the same as you, Chrome and CAC to access webmail and other .mil sites. I have long known that restarting seems to clear the lockout of system preferences--an awkward but workable temporary fix.

Last night I found another solution. I logged out of .mil webmail, quit Chrome, locked the CAC in Keychain and then pulled out the CAC card and reader. I was able to use the preferences normally, authenticating with Keychain password. Hope this is helpful. YMMV based on the CAC software you're using.

I can't figure out from the thread which piece of advice you are replying to here but I have an OS X 10.7.4 system which started showing these symptoms. I was able to sudo without a problem at the terminal and I am not using any third party authentication plugins like CAC.

killing the securityd process and reopening system preferences cured the problem.

Just adding my two cents here...I started having this issue on my early 2011 MacBook Pro over the last few days as well (could not unlock system preferences, could not install new programs/apps when it would ask for my password, etc.) tried everything mentioned here and other threads...I removed the certain files from the preference folder, tried adding another admin account (at which point I could not log onto the computer because it wasn't authenticating my password, thank goodness I had automatic login turned on for my regular account), tried re-installing the 10.7.4 combo updater....nothing worked. I was able to use the root user method as a work around but it was getting to be very annoying. I'm not using a CAC or anything like that. so I made sure I had an up-to-date backup via time machine, and I went into recovery via CMD+R at boot. I chose to reinstall Lion, I did not erase or partition the drive at all I just re-installed over my existing installation. Took around an hour and a half to download from the internet and install but I rebooted the computer and now everything works, plus I did not lose any of my data or files! YMMV but I wanted to post my experiences for others experiencing this same problem.

Exacty my experience!!! Except my internet must have been faster, it only took about a half hour. CMD + R is the way to go to solve this probem. I only wish I had done it sooner!!!

I cannot tell, what is going on with Lion as I already upgraded to Mountain Lion, but the problem is still there.

'sudo killall -9 securityd' actually works for this perticular problem, but here's actually one quite unwanted side-effect - it is impossible to eject any removable devices after that from Finder - only way to do it is using hdiutil from command line using sudo. In addition to that using Directory Utility is also not possible in normal way - when Directory Editor is opened by admin user i.e. myself, then user is automatisally authenticated as root, but after this killing of securityd it is impossible to authenticate as root if root user is not enabled i.e. normal operation is not possible.

One more thing caught my eye as I use "Graphite" theme on my user interface (i.e. not the default "Blue" theme) - if these unlock authentication dialogs where appearing with "Graphite" theme before, then after killing securityd they were appearing in "Blue" theme - as if they were launched in context of different user than myself...

This all means, that we can cure the initial problem by killing securityd, but then we are causing new problem, which yet again is needing its' own cure - something else than restart. Maybe enabling the root user might help?

P.S. As someone stated before - I am also using Estonian ID card and the problem appears every time after using it...