Cannot login, screen turns grey, then back to the prompt

[dpertschi]

So this issue was reported elsewear a year ago, though I never saw it happen until I just updated our base image to 10.7.5 > apps store InstallESD, pure vanilla InstaDMG.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1240725

Newly imaged machine cannot login as local admin or AD domain user. After entering credentials the screen flashes gray and then back to the auth. prompt. The reboot button also will not work. Pretty much identically reported, though no solid solutions are mentioned.

Has anyone here seen this and nailed down 'why'?

[bwcollins]

I am having the same issue and the only thing I have found that works is to reimage the computer with a different OS package, though it seems to work sporadically with the DMG that is causing the problems.

[haggan]

Just a question for you, this user having the problem, what happens if you ssh in to the machine and delete this file:

/Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.plist

After that, can you then log in?

/Matt

[dpertschi · Accepted solution]

The answer seems to be here, the response from Cameron...
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=46

/private/var/audit/current

Don't know what this is, or what it does, but deleting it the allows for proper login again.

And I did in fact interrogate all my packages and found my Office 2008.pkg had that file being installed.

I have not tested with my corrected package yet, but simply put rm -R /private/var/audit/current into my post imaging script is taking care of it at imaging.

[wdpickle]

We are also seeing this issue on 10.7.4 and .5. Our fix is to log in with a local admin account and un-join and rejoin the domain. We have noticed that there is no AD computer account on the machines until they are rejoined. If there is a better/easier way to resolve this I would like to know also.