Keychain - bare bones set up - what should it look like

Question

Hello
Sorry for asking such a boring question but:
WHAT DOES A BARE-BONES Keychain SETUP LOOK LIKE?
I am the single user of the machine and thus its administrator. I understand that a login keychain is set up on login, but I also have a keychain called my username. Do I need this? All I want is the absolute basic setup - number of keychains, locked - yes or no? etc etc
I want to store a single password - my internet mail access password. Should this be stored in my login keychain or another one (eg: my username keychain).
Long time Mac user, but never had to deal with this stuff until 10.4.9 came to town...
Cheers
PowerBook G4 17   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   1Gb RAM + Lacie External Firewire HD

Answer 1

Glad to help clarify for you. The 10.4.9 update isn't at fault for keychain problems. If users have keychain problems they need to look elsewhere than a system update.
Everyone who posts on these forums has a problem, but that doesn't mean the problem is widespread, universal, or due to some update (although that is possible in some cases.) The other side of the story are the thousands of users who have no problems and don't post on these forums for that reason.
I've been using Mac OS since 1986 and Mac OS X since it's original beta release. So far I've never had a keychain problem of any kind on any Mac I've used. If you maintain your system you shouldn't have any problems either.
Passwords and keychains have been a part of OS X always. You can't create a user account without them. The keychain, however, is a relatively transparent component with which the user rarely if ever has to deal.
And, although I've never used Windows all that much, I know it well enough to know that it, too, uses passwords and wallets (their word for keychains.) They are a fact of life on any multi-user operating system.
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.0 is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.2 is Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. The current version, 1.5.1, is Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep.
OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. PsynchX 2.1.1 and RsyncX 2.1 (Freeware)
6. Carbon Copy Cloner (Freeware - 3.0 is a Universal Binary)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.
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