Lion Login Troubles
So you got your Mac updated to shiny new Lion and you're enjoying all those new zoomy features.
Then one day, you go to log in, and the screen goes white and kicks you back to the login screen.
Uh oh. That's not good.
In my experience, something corrupted the keychain(s) simply removing the keychains from the /Users/USERNAME/Library/Keychains/ folder allowed the user to log in and work as normal, save the loss of the passwords.
Fear not, your files are not lost. You're just unable to login to the graphical environment.
Here's the how to:
You'll need to get to the command line of the system. This will be easiest if you have another account on the machine, but could be done through Single User Mode as well.
If you're in Single User Mode, you'll need to mount the system Read/Write.
mount -o update /
If you're using Terminal.app from another user, you'll need root privelages. sudo works if you're an admin user, otherwise, you can su USERNAME to the account that is broken.
Enter the following, obviously replacing USERNAME with the short name of the account that is broken.
Note: the short name of an account can be found by looking at the name of the home folder of an account. Unless specifically altered, the default is a concatenation of the first and last name. John Doe would get the short name johndoe unless otherwise altered.
rm /Users/USERNAME/Library/Keychains/*
Once you've done that, you can reboot the system if you're in Single User Mode (shutdown -r now) or log out of the other account you were using.
At this point you should be able to sign into the ailed account.
You will have lost all the passwords that were saved in your keychain, and while annoying, that's a small price to pay vs losing your data.
