Reset local user passwords in Lion and SL

Who doesn't know the pain of user leaving the company in anger, just throwing his equipment in the corner? Or someone who comes back from 6 weeks rafting in Canada, barely remembering where he works? 

With a fully directory enabled network this poses no problem, you just reset the password as admin. But with local users (and no local company admin account) this means some work.

Lion (10.7)

In Lion, you can do this via the recovery partition. There is a tool called "resetpassword" that you can start in the terminal. Here is a screenshot:

That's quite comfortable. Just enter the recoverypartition by pressing "alt" while turning your mac on, and choose "Recovery HD".

Alternatively, you can do it in single user mode:

• Hold "cmd-s" for Single User mode at start up
• Use the following commands (without $>):

$> /sbin/fsck -fy  # Check Filesystem
$> /sbin/mount -uw /  # Remount / as rewriteable
$> launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist  # Load Directory Service
$> ls /Users  # Show Users in System
$> passwd <user>  # Change PW for User
$> reboot

  
Snow Leopard (10.6)


In SL you can use the "resetpassword" tool as well, but you have to boot from your install disk. 
Reseting your password in Single User mode is a lot faster, and does not need a cd.  

• Hold "cmd-s" for Single User mode at start up
• Use the following commands (without $>):

$> /sbin/fsck -fy  # Check Filesystem
$> /sbin/mount -uw /  # Remount / as rewriteable
$> launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist  # Load Directory Service
$> ls /Users  # Show Users in System
$> dscl . -passwd /Users/<user> <password>  # Change PW for User
$> reboot

I've tried both, works for me.