Executive summary:At the beginning of the Spring '99 semester, we moved out password services to a new pair of servers. There were two problems with this changeover with regard to Macintosh logins.
If you are a new user or have changed your password between January 20 and March 2, 1999, changing your password again should fix Mac logins for you.
The first was that the Macs were configured to talk to the old servers. All new students were unable to login, since their passwords only existed on the new servers. The fix for this required reconfiguring all Macs to talk to the new servers. This was accomplished February 16.
The second problem was that the Mac login program relies on the old style Kerberos key. The new servers were configured to only keep the new style keys. So while all data moved from the old servers to the new ones had the old style keys which worked for Mac logins, anyone who generated a new password only has the new style key and therefore could not login on a Mac. Fixing this required reconfiguring the new servers to keep both old and new style keys (done March 2) and changing passwords for those who have generated passwords on the new servers since the beginning of the semester. (The passwords must be changed because it's impossible to generate an old style key without knowing the password.) If you're a new user or have changed your password between the beginning of the semester and March 2, changing your password again should fix Mac logins for you.
If you still have problems logging in on a Mac, please send email to help including
We apologize for the inconvenience.