I eventually got around to setting up a wireless connection and KDE Wallet popped up asking me to set a wallet password. I did but caps lock was on and of course I entered the incorrect password on subsequent attempts.
Researched the net and tried all the solutions for resetting wallet such as renaming the wallet kde directory. None of them worked.
I then decided to uninstall KDE wallet via Yast. I removed wallet and it’s dependencies and restarted.
On restart Leap booted into the ICE window manager. WTF!
More internet research on my backup machine.
Logged out of ICE and could see that it was the only window manager available. The de-install of wallet took out plasma as well.
Logged back into ICE and installed KDM and plasma 5 via yast and then rebooted.
Selected plasma 5 at the login screen and logged in. Everything back to normal. Relief!
I then tried various wallet passwords with caps lock on until I got the correct one.
I then logged into wallet manager and changed the wallet password.
I then logged into KDE System Settings ==> wallet and attempted to disable wallet. This required a password which is different to the wallet manager password so I cannot disable wallet.
Is there any reason why a rubbish application like KDE Wallet is part of the default KDE install? The forums are littered people having problems with it.
It would have been sufficient to delete the wallet itself. Just remove files and directories with “kwallet” as part of their name. The ones that gave you problems were in “.config” and “.local/share”. That would delete wallet content and password, so you could start over.
I then logged into KDE System Settings ==> wallet and attempted to disable wallet. This required a password which is different to the wallet manager password so I cannot disable wallet.
Did you try your login password?
Is there any reason why a rubbish application like KDE Wallet is part of the default KDE install? The forums are littered people having problems with it.
I don’t agree that it is a “rubbish application”. I find it useful. But you are not required to use it. Just disable it.
You might be unhappy to hear that there are actually two distinct kwallets. The other one is from KDE4, and is still there until the transition to plasma 5 is complete.
Although I don’t like doing it, I’ve found the only way to deal with KWallet is to use the empty password trick. If you can get things back to their “pristine” state, the first time KWallet pops up demanding a password be created for a wallet, don’t enter anything and just click through.
I honestly never know if KWallet is working as intended or is broken. The user-facing parts of it are seriously confusing, if not hostile. E.g.,options are given with no explanation of why or when a user would choose any of them: Why would I disable it? What’s the impact? Why would I leave it on? What’s the impact? What does the bit about the “last app using it” mean? Apps use KWallet? What does that mean?
I’m sure the developer(s) know. But they aren’t making software for themselves.
IMO, KWallet for years has been responsible for more people abandoning KDE than anything else. It’s a pity the shift to the new design and structure didn’t make fixing KDE’s handling of passwords a top priority.
Gnome has handled passwords appropriately for years.
I’ll admit that you have a point there. For example, there’s an option to have multiple wallets. But the documentation never explains how that works. Supposedly, you would use a different wallet for “local” passwords, but it is never explained how it is decided that a password is local.
Yes, and that is remarkably poor programming practice, IMHO. If I did that decades ago, I would have been run out of the University campus tarred-and-feathered!
KWallet is required by KDE’s NetworkManager applet to save the passwords for user connections.
Disabling KWallet works, but you have to enter the passwords every time then, they won’t be remembered (it is KWallet’s purpose to provide a KDE-wide way to store passwords after all).
You can setup your wireless connection as “system connection” though (“Allow other users to connect”) and enter it in the settings dialog, it will then be stored system-wide by NetworkManager (in /etc/NetworkManager), not in KWallet.
Or use GNOME’s nm-applet, that has no idea of KWallet and uses the gnome-keyring instead.
Or switch to Wicked, that doesn’t use KWallet either.
There are other KDE applications that require KWallet, at least if you want them to remember passwords. Even with an empty password for KWallet (to not having to type it in on every login), this is still better than having those passwords in plain text in the config files, so support for the latter has been dropped from most KDE applications.
There is a way to open the KWallet automatically on login (with the user password) though, like it happens with GNOME’s keyring.
You need to install the package pam_kwallet for that (and/or pam_kwallet5 for the KF5 KWallet). IIANM, you need to do a manual change to the PAM config as well (that it calls pam_kwallet.so on login), I don’t know exactly at the moment. This should help though, but I haven’t tried it: https://www.dennogumi.org/2014/04/unlocking-kwallet-with-pam/ (a bit outdated, especially the warning about pre-release software is moot now as pam_kwallet has been officially released, but at least the part about the PAM config should still apply, replace pam_kwallet.so with pam_kwallet5.so for the KF5 KWallet) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KDE_Wallet