I have just installed openSUSE 13.1 on my system. I was running Gentoo, and retained my home directory on another filesystem. I am running the Xfce desktop.
Chromium in my new system is unable to access any of the passwords I have previously saved. The password manager in the settings window shows empty, and no passwords are automatically filled in on web pages. However, if I open the “Passwords and Keys” accessory, they are all still there in the “login” keyring showing as “Google Chrome password”, along with all my other passwords from other applications.
Chromium seems to tag your data with a randomish key.
Using KDE, what I did was copy the directory tree from “$HOME/.config/chromium” to the new system. And then it was able to recognize the passwords previously saved (in kdewallet which I also moved over).
I was not clear about my files. I am using the same home directory I was using with my previous install – same .config/chromium, same gnome keyring data, same everything. It was preserved on a separate filesystem so the installation didn’t wipe it out, but I am still using it.
I looked at the password details and found the key in the application name. It’s the same as the local_profile_id in .config/chromium/Default/Preferences, and it hasn’t changed for at least a couple of months. I’ve also entered some new passwords into chromium, and they are now being stored as plain text in the “.config/chromium/Default/Login Data” database, so chromium simply isn’t contacting the gnome keyring.
No, it wasn’t. Installing it (and removing chromium-desktop-kde) fixes the problem. I hadn’t even thought to look at that, as I have virtually no other kde components installed, and missed seeing it being installed. I am actually using Xfce (better support for dual-head), but it uses gnome-keyring for passwords so the keyring is unlocked at login.
For future installs, just select “chromium-desktop-gnome” for install, and it will pull in “chromium” as a dependency. That way you will avoid this problem.