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From: John on 19 Nov 2009 21:26
David Empson wrote:
> John <jhy001(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> David Empson wrote:
>>> John <jhy001(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I upgraded to Snow Leopard from Leopard, and Time Machine will
>>>> not stay locked over reboots. I keep locking it, it keeps
>>>> unlocking. The same thing happened when I first upgraded to
>>>> Leopard. I had to post, and someone told me to do something
>>>> like jump up and down on my left foot while waving my arms
>>>> and facing North, when the moon was full, and the sun was
>>>> shining... or something like that... and it then stayed locked.
>>>>
>>>> But this is Windoze nonsense. And they didn't fix whatever it
>>>> is after all this time.
>>>>
>>>> How does one make the lock "stick"?
>>> What do you mean by "the lock"? Are you referring to the padlock in the
>>> bottom left corner of System Preferences panes (including the Time
>>> Machine pane)?
>> Yes.
>>
>>> This controls whether you need to enter an administration password
>>> before making changes in most System Preferences panes. (Some panes
>>> always do that, including Security and Accounts.)
>> Yes, I know that is what it is for.
>>
>>> If you want the padlock to be locked by default in all panes where it is
>> I don't want that. I just want the lock on Time Machine to stay locked
>> when I lock it. Is that too much to ask?
>
> You cannot control the padlock state for individual preference panes. It
> is a global state for all of System Preferences. If you lock or unlock
> one preference pane, all preference panes will be locked or unlocked
> simultaneously.
>
> As far as I recall, this aspect of System Preferences has worked the
> same way in every version of Mac OS X.
>
> (An admin user can see System Preferences in a state where the security
> related panes are locked and the rest are unlocked, but this is a
> temporary state which goes away as soon as you lock or unlock any
> preference pane.)
>
>> Other settings "stick" why not this one???
>
> Because it isn't a setting. It is just the current security state of
> System Preferences for the current user.
>
> The default state (after login) is controlled by the user type (admin vs
> normal) and the preference I mentioned earlier.
>
>> Sure sounds like a bug to me. If it isn't going to "stick" why not just
>> make it "informational" and not able to be toggled where you assume that
>> it will "stick"???
>
> Being able to temporarily lock it while logged in as an admin user is a
> dubiously useful feature, e.g. if you want to leave your computer
> unattended or let someone else use it, without them being able to change
> system-wide preferences.
>
> It is useful if you want to change a preference while logged in as a
> non-admin user: unlock with admin user name and password, change
> setting, then lock again afterwards.
>
> If you have other users on the computer, they should be set up with
> their own user accounts. If those accounts don't have admin rights, they
> won't be able to change Time Machine or other system-wide preferences.
> If they have admin rights, they will be able to unlock System
> Preferences anyway, no matter what you do with the padlock.
>
> If you want System Preferences to behave differently, then complaining
> about it here won't achieve anything. File a feature request with Apple.
>
> http://www.apple.com/feedback/
>

Well, from what I see, I have no reason to "trust" that it will stay
locked for non-administrative users because the behavior I see does
not support that conclusion.

So much for a logical look and feel...

Report a bug! I've tried that over 40 years, trust me, it isn't worth
my time. I still have an open emacs bug I reported 20 years ago that
gets updated but never fixed every few years.

I guess I'll just have to do ALL LOCKED OR NOTHING!!! Very counter
intuitive for a Mac.

From: David Empson on 19 Nov 2009 22:23
John <jhy001(a)earthlink.net> wrote:

> David Empson wrote:
> > John <jhy001(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> >> David Empson wrote:
> >>> John <jhy001(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I upgraded to Snow Leopard from Leopard, and Time Machine will
> >>>> not stay locked over reboots. I keep locking it, it keeps
> >>>> unlocking. The same thing happened when I first upgraded to
> >>>> Leopard. I had to post, and someone told me to do something
> >>>> like jump up and down on my left foot while waving my arms
> >>>> and facing North, when the moon was full, and the sun was
> >>>> shining... or something like that... and it then stayed locked.
> >>>>
> >>>> But this is Windoze nonsense. And they didn't fix whatever it
> >>>> is after all this time.
> >>>>
> >>>> How does one make the lock "stick"?
> >>> What do you mean by "the lock"? Are you referring to the padlock in the
> >>> bottom left corner of System Preferences panes (including the Time
> >>> Machine pane)?
> >> Yes.

[snip]

> Well, from what I see, I have no reason to "trust" that it will stay
> locked for non-administrative users because the behavior I see does
> not support that conclusion.

It has always behaved consistently for me whenever I've logged in as a
non-admin user. It is never unlocked by default.

I vaguely recall some prior version of Mac OS X did not behave
consistently for admin users - I'd sometimes see it locked and sometimes
unlocked, but that might have just been my poor understanding of the
mechanism at the time (e.g. I hadn't noticed that it depended on which
preference pane I was looking at, or another computer might have had the
"Always lock" preference enabled, or I didn't notice that it reverted to
the default when I logged in again, or I didn't realise that the setting
was retained if I quit and relaunched System Preferences).

> So much for a logical look and feel...
>
> Report a bug! I've tried that over 40 years, trust me, it isn't worth
> my time. I still have an open emacs bug I reported 20 years ago that
> gets updated but never fixed every few years.

It varies depending on the company. Apple is pretty good if you have a
genuine problem and do it through the right channels with enough
supporting information.

I have filed in the order of ten actual bug reports against Mac OS X,
via the developer channel (bugreporter.apple.com). Two of them remain
open (both early minor issues with upgrading to 10.5, and I think one of
them was fixed in a later version). The rest were dealt with promptly,
even if it was just to say it was behaving as designed, or if it was a
duplicate of an existing bug report.

Feature requests have no associated feedback, and few (if any) of mine
have been implemented.

--
David Empson
dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz
From: Paul Sture on 20 Nov 2009 12:35
In article <1j9hkes.r785gy1nmn929N%dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz>,
dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) wrote:

> I vaguely recall some prior version of Mac OS X did not behave
> consistently for admin users - I'd sometimes see it locked and sometimes
> unlocked, but that might have just been my poor understanding of the
> mechanism at the time (e.g. I hadn't noticed that it depended on which
> preference pane I was looking at, or another computer might have had the
> "Always lock" preference enabled, or I didn't notice that it reverted to
> the default when I logged in again, or I didn't realise that the setting
> was retained if I quit and relaunched System Preferences).

What I noticed at some point with Tiger was that if I unlocked something
in System Preferences as an admin user it remained that way until I
logged out and back in again. This was entirely reproducible, and I
didn't like it.

--
Paul Sture
From: David Empson on 20 Nov 2009 18:30
David Empson <dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz> wrote:

> Dave Balderstone <dave(a)N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
>
> > In article <4B05BC08.7090504(a)earthlink.net>, John
> > <jhy001(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > > I upgraded to Snow Leopard from Leopard, and Time Machine will
> > > not stay locked over reboots. I keep locking it, it keeps
> > > unlocking. The same thing happened when I first upgraded to
> > > Leopard. I had to post, and someone told me to do something
> > > like jump up and down on my left foot while waving my arms
> > > and facing North, when the moon was full, and the sun was
> > > shining... or something like that... and it then stayed locked.
> > >
> > > But this is Windoze nonsense. And they didn't fix whatever it
> > > is after all this time.
> > >
> > > How does one make the lock "stick"?
> >
> > When I go to the Time Machine pref pane, it's unlocked. Clicking the
> > lock icon does nothing. It simply refuses to lock.
> >
> > Security pref panes setting are locked, and "Require a password to
> > unlock each System Preferences pane" is NOT checked.
> >
> > Bug? Can anyone else confirm?
>
> Works fine for me, so it may be something specific to your system.
>
> > OSX 10.6.2, MacBook Pro.
>
> Ditto. (And I have the same setting under security.)

Hm, now it is behaving the way Dave described. I don't like it when
things change behaviour unpredictably.

If I click on the open padlock in Time Machine, Date & Time or similar
panes, the padlock flickers and the text changes briefly (too fast to
read), then it reverts back to the unlocked state with "Click the lock
to prevent further changes."

It appears that something is overriding the lock state, so that an admin
user can never lock the preference panes other than Security and
Accounts, unless "Require a password..." is enabled.

This may be a new bug in Snow Leopard, and it is not consistent, given
that it wasn't doing it for me yesterday (with the same settings, and I
haven't restarted or logged out since then but I have done some fast
user switching).

It went away again after I logged out and in again, and I haven't worked
out how to trigger it again. (Tried sleep and fast user switching, which
are the only major state changing actions I took since yesterday.)

I've only seen it on my admin account. I don't use my non-admin accounts
long enough to notice whether this problem might be able to crop up for
them as well.

--
David Empson
dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz
From: Paul Sture on 21 Nov 2009 09:20
In article <1j9j4wc.1ulxfee96haq1N%dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz>,
dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) wrote:

> Hm, now it is behaving the way Dave described. I don't like it when
> things change behaviour unpredictably.
>
> If I click on the open padlock in Time Machine, Date & Time or similar
> panes, the padlock flickers and the text changes briefly (too fast to
> read), then it reverts back to the unlocked state with "Click the lock
> to prevent further changes."
>
> It appears that something is overriding the lock state, so that an admin
> user can never lock the preference panes other than Security and
> Accounts, unless "Require a password..." is enabled.
>
> This may be a new bug in Snow Leopard, and it is not consistent, given
> that it wasn't doing it for me yesterday (with the same settings, and I
> haven't restarted or logged out since then but I have done some fast
> user switching).
>
> It went away again after I logged out and in again, and I haven't worked
> out how to trigger it again. (Tried sleep and fast user switching, which
> are the only major state changing actions I took since yesterday.)
>
> I've only seen it on my admin account. I don't use my non-admin accounts
> long enough to notice whether this problem might be able to crop up for
> them as well.

A long shot here, but what do you see in the relevant plist files? Are
they somehow not getting written with the new/correct values?

--
Paul Sture
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