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The default installation of Python on Mac OS X Snow Leopard is version 2.6.1. According to the man page for Python on Snow Leopard, Python 2.6 executes as a 64-bit application by default.

If, for some reason, you need to run it as a 32-bit application, this can be changed at the command line:

The preference can be set in either the User or Local filesystem domain in Mac OS X, following the normal precedence rules. To unset it, presumably you would change the boolean to “no” — or perhaps even delete the “Prefer-32-Bit” key.

There is also an environment variable that can override this preference.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard appears to roll in the functionality of the separate Keychain Minder tool. Keychain Minder has provided a way for system administrators to help keep the passphrase in sync with the login account password. That can be very helpful for users in a directory services environment, because users may change their password in ways outside Mac OS X, thereby leaving the keychain passphrase out of sync.

The keychain passphrase is separate from the password used to log in to a Mac OS X user account. By default, however, the password on the login account is set as the passphrase for that user’s default keychain. When the password and passphrase get out of sync, it can cause a lot of confusion for those who don’t understand what’s going on.

I’d wager it’s a rare Mac OS X user that intentionally sets their login account password and keychain passphrase to be different, as I do. Therefore, keeping the two in sync is a benefit in a large percentage of cases.

Snow Leopard implements this feature as a preference item in Keychain Access, under the First Aid tab. It’s labeled “Synchronize login keychain password with account.” (I would have rephrased that as “default keychain” since keychains by other names can be the default keychain; the default name just happens to be “login” nowadays.)

Keychain Minder stored its settings in the com.afp548.KeychainMinder.plist preferences file. This doesn’t seem to have any impact, one way or another, on this particular keychain preference.

So, I looked for and eventually discovered that the new built-in feature of Snow Leopard stores its state in the SyncLoginPassword key of the com.apple.keychainaccess.plist file. You can see this change by use of the defaults command in Terminal:

You will want to have this preference disabled on any user accounts — likely power users — whose login account passwords will differ from their keychain passphrases. Otherwise, they will get prompted regularly to “Synchronize,” “Create New,” or “Continue” during the login process.