by Myk Melez | Mozilla

making OS X stop prompting me for my wireless password

I’ve long had problems automatically reconnecting to a certain WPA Enterprise wireless network from my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.

Despite deleting the network from System Preferences > Network > AirPort > Advanced… > Preferred Networks, deleting its password from the login and System keychains using Applications > Utilities > Keychain Access, and then saving the network and credentials anew, the OS would prompt me to reenter my password for it every time I reconnected to it.

Some digging around on the web suggested that folks having a variety of Mac OS X wireless networking problems can sometimes solve them by deleting various configuration files, including /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist.

I checked that file, and strangely, it listed a very old password for that wireless network. Turning off AirPort, deleting that file (I made a backup first just in case), and turning AirPort back on has resolved the problem. I can now reconnect to the network repeatedly (including after a reboot) without being prompted for my password.

 

Myk Melez

Myk is a Principal Software Architect and in-house entrepreneur at Mozilla. A Mozillian since 1999, he's contributed to the Web App Developer Initiative, PluotSorbet, Open Web Apps, Firefox OS Simulator, Jetpack, Raindrop, Snowl, Personas, Firefox, Thunderbird, and Bugzilla. He's just a cook. He's all out of bubblegum.