Can't Unlock Preference Panes

One more observation - this is happening after using ID card with Safari. If card is used in Firefox, then problem does not occur.

****! Now it seems after sleep that unlocking "goes south" even when using it with Firefox...

I'm curious what middleware you're using to enable your CAC with?

I'm using the PKCard program from Thursby, and I'm still experiencing the problem under ML. Thursby acknowledges the problem, but blames Apple and offers no solution except a reboot. I had rather expected this to be fixed in ML.

I'm going to be giving SCCI from SCB Solutions a try as middleware, and see if it has the same problem or not.

I haven't been able to test Firefox since Pkcard doesn't support it, but using PKcard and Chrome, the problem does not seem to occur, at least so far. I've been able to log into CAC sites, close the browser, and still unlock preferences.

It is the software bundle created for this very same Estonian ID card I am using.

http://code.google.com/p/esteid/

However there is another version supported by card issuer itself, but that one has it's own serious usability issues (albeit being newer version than 'esteid') -> https://installer.id.ee/?lang=eng

I will try out this other one and report here.

Now both are tried out and both are giving the same result - unlocking of preference panes is not possible after using.

Now I found this link, which leads here to our thread - http://id.ee/index.php?id=34456

It is about this problem and states quite bluntly, that whole thing is a bug in OS X.

Will Apple ever going to assume it as a known bug ? A simple "we are aware and will fix that on the next 12 months" would really help the enterprise users.

It would be possible to live with, if it had a workaround other than restarting. Unfortunately killing securityd is not the workaround because of already described side-effects.

Being slightly offtopic - this kind of reminds the problem with Lion when my mac just did not sleep - now after upgrading this thing "magically" got resolved. However automatic brightness control got as unusable, as it was on Snow Leopard (i.e. auto adjustments are too agressive) - when it was perfect on Lion.

Please file a bug with Apple, this rises probability that it will be addressed.

Also, please do not post offtopic things to unreleated threads and try to combine individual sentences to one post, everyone is really annoyed to get 10 different message notifications about same thing.

Yeah, this issue is totally ********. I hope Apple gets to it quickly, thanks for looking into it with such depth.

For what it's worth, this is already filed as a bug. I filed it during the 10.8 appleseed testing, and I'll re-file in the 10.7.5 appleseed system too. and have the acknowledgement from Apple (automated). Whether or not they'll devote resources to fixing it is another matter.

I'm going to keep looking for a workaround that's more usable than killing securityd; my guess is that there's a way of making it forget about the token authentication (card) without having to kill the process and screw up other things. If I find anything interesting, I'll reply.

Stephen:

After upgrading to the new rMBP with 10.8, I noticed this same issue for the first time. My issue seemed to appear after unplugging my CAC reader, but could occur by simply removing the CAC.

Regardless, please know that I and others are most interested in what you discover, so please do not give up this effort.

R/

RD

So to everyone who's posted with this annoying problem, I just want to say that it appears to be fixed in an upcoming release.

Without going into any further detais about the release itself, so as not to incur the wrath of Apple, I submitted this as a bug to the original 10.8 beta, and to the beta of an upcoming build. A recent build release seems to have fixed it.

I am still using Thursby pkard as my middleware (software to read the CAC), and I can't verify that other middleware products won't continue to have problems. But with pkard at least, I can log into CAC websites, or use my CAC to sign email, and my preference panes can still be locked and unlocked without any problem.

I would be interested in hearing back from anyone who still has a problem after the 10.8.1 release, just to see if the problem is fixed across all middleware. It should be, as the problem was in the OS.

Well... now that 10.8.1 is released, it is obvious, that Estonian ID card users got no help from this. Same old thing as before 😐