Hello,
I have a machine that enables autologin for the default user.
From time to time when I run certain programs, it pops up a window saying “keyring was not unlocked when logged in” and asks for a password to unlock it.
I tried my username pw, root pw, Kwallet pw and none of them can get rid of the window so I ended up just close it.
But it seems the program I tried to run can work afterwards.
Any explanation? I feel stupid inputting all my passwords in this mysterious window.
Maybe this will help: https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-keyring/
BTW, I use KDE and the program is called KWallet in KDE and when I first used it, I set a password for it and it always asks me when I reboot for the password. In my case, the password is NOT my username login password.
Hi, I did try my kwallet password but it didn’t get rid of the popup window.
You probably mean it correct, but Kwallet will never ask a password on boot. For which of all the users you may have should it open the Kwallet?
It will ask the password from a logged in KDE user and only then when an KDE application thinks it needs a password from Kwallet. Thus, when a user starts some application automatic on login that needs a password from Kwallet (e.g. the NetworkManager client, or Kmail accessing mail servers), this will look as if Kwallet tries to open at login, but this is only indirect the case. And it has nothing whatsovevr to do with boot.
It is probably the Gnome keyring, though we don’t have enough information to be sure of that.
It lives at “$HOME/.local/share/keyrings”.
The normal scheme is for the login keyring to be opened on login using your login password. But that won’t happen if you use autologin. And maybe it won’t happen with SDDM, but it does work with GDM or LIGHTDM managing the login.
If the login keyring is not open, then Gnome has an alternative keyring and it prompts for that needed. It’s up to you to remember what you used.
My suggestion: just delete everything in that directory, and start over. And this time remember what password you use. Or you could move everything there to a different directory, so that you could later undo the change if you don’t like the result.
hello bonedriven,
I had issues with Kwallet asking for a pw while I was logged in on mate de. I started a recent thread on this subject. My first fix was to delete Kwallet and evertything that had the word “wallet” in it. This did solve the problem with Kwallet asking for login pw, Unfortunately that took out some programs I wanted to keep.
My second fix was to open Kwallet Manager. There is an enable/disable button. I turned off the enable. I did this while logged onto the kde plasma de. This also worked and eliminated the login requests. I dont know if it was necessary to be logged into kde plasma as I didn’t test that out,
As of now after many reboots, I have had no kdewallet pw requests.
tom kosvic
I am not sure that discussing how Kwallet functions will help people with Gnome Keyring problems.
I think you are right. I just opened seahorse and saw “passwords”-“login”, which says “this collection is empty”. But if I right click for “unlock”, it shows an exactly same prompt for unlocking the keyring.
I have no idea what the pw is. So I guess I’ll just delete it.
I never used seahorse but I do have gnome DE installed. For those saying about kwallet, yeah I’m quite sure it has nothing to do with kwallet this time.
Edit: question: Does it mean autologin through KDE/SDDM is less secure than through GDM/LIGHTDM?
I don’t know of any reason to say that. There is just the difference that Gnome keyring uses your login password, while kwallet doesn’t (unless you install pam_kwallet).
Yes, I also have both Gnome and KDE installed, but mostly use KDE. I don’t use autologin. I currently use GDM for logins. But I don’t think one is more secure than the other.
If you are using GDM, then it opens the Gnome keyring on login (but not on autologin). If the password is not already set, that sets it to your login password. For KDE, I am using GPG to unlock “kwallet”, and that is probably more secure than using the login password.
The problem is that some applications only want to use “kwallet” and others only want to use Gnome keyring. And that’s can be confusing.
Thank you for the explanation. Now I understand! I had got it all backward, thinking my login password would have been protected by the gnome keyring if I use GDM. :X