So I forgot my user password for 10.5
I changed it yesterday. I typed it in *twice*. I had it written down on a piece of paper in my pocket, just in case. After I changed it and my screensaver kicked in and I awoke my iMac to use it again, though, I couldn't log in. I'm still not sure what happened, because it just seems so unlikely I would type a different password than the one written down twice. At any rate, for anyone who may find this, here's how everything played out.
In these situations, you're supposed to boot from your install disc and use their password reset utility. I'm at work and didn't have a 10.5 install disc handy, so I googled how to reset a password without a disc and came up with a post at hackaddict:
http://hackaddict.blogspot.com/2007/07/reset-os-x-password-without-os-x-cd.html
You delete an invisible file that tells OS X you've run the initial setup, so the next time you boot, the setup runs again, you create a new admin account and then you can login, reset your old password, and you're done. Simple instructions, and I had recent backup, so I dove in. No problems until I rebooted.
The setup started again, but my keyboard would not type. I could hit the volume keys, though, and the mac would respond. I couldn't get around this. Trying a new keyboard didn't work.
I ended up getting an install disc from home, ran the reset utility. Great. I still had this problem of the iMac wanting to run its setup, though. For that, booted the iMac in Firewire target disk mode (hold down T after the start-up chime), connect it to my personal Macbook, and use the Terminal to copy the .AppleSetupDone from it to the iMac. Reboot the iMac and we were good to go.
There was another problem with my keychain file still using my borked password, but I had a relatively recent backup that I copied over, then reset its password.
