10.6: Set a firmware password from the command line

I am in the middle of mass deploying thousands of new MacBook Airs at work, and all my previous tools to set the firmware password no longer work in late 2010 or newer models of Macs. This was due to some sort of change on firmware, but I haven't dug deep enough to know what exactly changed.


I needed a work around fast so I was looking into the Firmware Password Utility found on the Installer DVDs. There is a tool called setregproptool inside the package contents of this utility. This command line tool can be used to set the firmware password on your Mac.

My problem of course was that I did not have a new Installer DVD at all, in fact all I had were a few thousand of the USB OS X installer disks that ship with Macbook Airs. So, if you open up Terminal and browse the Mac OS X Install USB stick, you will see these contents:

 $ cd /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install $ ls -l total 8254080 -rw-r--r--@ 1 hadmin  staff    13447709 Dec  8   ...

Source: http://feeds.macosxhints.com/click.phdo?i=a7939fde37788bbc9fcb9e4913d88d33

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