Castlemanic

Q: Keychain reset does not work

Can't reset my keychain. Just upgraded to Mavericks, had to restart for an iTunes update and everything went downhill from there.

dozens of applications ask for access to 'local items', my user password doesn't work and i tried a few other passwords that it might have been, but i know i used my user password before installing mavericks, but that's not working.

Went online to try to find answers, got pointed to the 'reset my default keychain', clicked it and the program asked for the password for 'local items' keychain, tried my user password again, didn't work. The 'Login' keychain is now gone completely, it disappeared. Clicking 'reset my default keychain' brings the popup 'specified keychain could not be found', so that won't work anymore.

Looked for some more answers, one pointed to deleting the keychain entirely, which i tried but the option to delete 'local items' is greyed out.

Attempted keychain first aid, it asks for a password to access 'local items'. after trying my user password again, it didn't work. now the first aid displays an error message every time i attempt a repair. here's the text from my latest attempt:

 

Repair started

Checking keychain configuration for yousefshohayeb (user ID=501)

Home directory is /Users/yousefshohayeb

Checked login keychain

Error: login keychain not found

Created a new empty “login” keychain.

Checked password for ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain

Checked settings for ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain

Settings for ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain may cause the keychain to be locked

Current values: lockOnSleep=yes, autoLock=5 mins

Unable to change keychain settings (-128)

Checked default keychain

Checked contents of ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain

Warning: some problems were not fixed

Repair failed

 


after that, i restarted my computer, when i put my username to login to my account, i got asked to provide the keychain password for 'local items'. This happened while i was logging in and the computer refused to log into the account until i pressed the 'cancel' button.

 

Nothing is working, what do i do?

 

As a side note, i either want to unlock the 'local items' keychain or i want to stop messages from popping up, which i attempted and again hit the 'local items' password wall. I also can't check 'allow user to reset password using Apple ID' because the option is greyed out even after unlocking it to change items.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 1:32 AM

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Q: Keychain reset does not work

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  • by Castlemanic,Solvedanswer

    Castlemanic Castlemanic Oct 24, 2013 1:37 AM in response to Castlemanic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 24, 2013 1:37 AM in response to Castlemanic

    One more thing, i've never touched the keychain application before, so I don't have an old keychain password to try.

  • by Castlemanic,

    Castlemanic Castlemanic Oct 24, 2013 2:20 AM in response to Castlemanic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 24, 2013 2:20 AM in response to Castlemanic

    after a while of not touching the keychain, an application opened up keychain, i tried my user password and it suddenly worked. NO idea what happened but thankfully it fixed itself.

  • by Pacote-san,Helpful

    Pacote-san Pacote-san Oct 24, 2013 6:04 AM in response to Castlemanic
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Oct 24, 2013 6:04 AM in response to Castlemanic

    For those having issue with keychain asking for "Local Items" every time after upgrading to Mavericks, and not being able to unlock the keychain lock (asks again for the same unknown password)

     

    Don't even try to repair (it will not work) or Reset my Default Keychain (it will ask for the password).

     

    Fixes:

     

     

    • Did not try that yet but should work. Go to ~/Library/Keychain  and move all files to the trash.  Reboot your mac and keychain should give you a message of error, just click to create new keychain.
    • What i did and worked fine. Create a new user and log in with it. Go to~/Library/Keychain and copy all content to a USB Drive or even to /Users/Shared.  Log back to your old user (that is getting those annoying keychain password messages) and copy all the content you just backed up to the keychain folder. Reboot and when you get the message, choose create new keychain.

    All done

  • by shellcode,Helpful

    shellcode shellcode Oct 24, 2013 10:44 AM in response to Castlemanic
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Oct 24, 2013 10:44 AM in response to Castlemanic

    Your login.keychain password is out of sync with the new iCloud keychain and needs to be re-sync'd.

     

    The new iCloud keychain is either called "Local items" if you don't have syncing enabled or "iCloud" if you enabled iCloud keychain sync.

     

    1. Open 'Keychain Access' Application
    2. Select the 'login' keychain from the keychains list
    3. Click the lock at the top to lock the login keychain
    4. Click the lock again to unlock the login keychainunlock.png
    5. After entering your login keychain password you should be presented with a dialog:reset.password.png
    6. Clicking the reset button will re-sync your login.keychain password with the iCloud keychain password.

     

    If everything from the above fails for whatever reason the last resort you can do the following:

    1. Open terminal
    2. cd ~/Library/Keychains
    3. ls   
      1. When you 'ls' here you will see a folder that contains a bunch of random number liks so:
      2. 94ED610F-DD96-4ECF-A2BC-7D2F8651A464  (this number is unique on each system)
    4. rm -rf 94ED610F-DD96-4ECF-A2BC-7D2F8651A464
    5. Reboot
    6. <when you log back in everything should be back to normal>

  • by Castlemanic,

    Castlemanic Castlemanic Oct 24, 2013 12:49 PM in response to shellcode
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 24, 2013 12:49 PM in response to shellcode

    I should have mentioned that the 'local items' folder was locked to begin with, and attempting to unlock it made it ask for the keychain password, which is non-existant. Thanks for the advice though.

  • by rwm19,

    rwm19 rwm19 Oct 29, 2013 4:11 AM in response to shellcode
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 29, 2013 4:11 AM in response to shellcode

    I had the exact same problem and my login.keychain had disappeared completely.

     

    After more than an hour talking with Apple Tech Support and being 'escalated' to a senior advisor the problem was fixed (as you said) by just deleting the folder with the random numbers in  /library/keychains , then rebooting and creating a new keychain when asked to. - That was just 30 mins ago but all well so far!!

  • by Fer2301,

    Fer2301 Fer2301 Oct 29, 2013 1:32 PM in response to shellcode
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 29, 2013 1:32 PM in response to shellcode

    Thank you, this solution works ok!

  • by Greg Fiumara,

    Greg Fiumara Greg Fiumara Oct 29, 2013 6:36 PM in response to Castlemanic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 29, 2013 6:36 PM in response to Castlemanic

    My father just had this problem. His default keychain was not named "login." Somehow, Mavericks(/Mail.app?) created a keychain called "login" and kept prompting him for the password for the login keychain. Of course, he doesn't know the password. The solution for him was to change the name of his default keychain to login.  I brain-dumped my interaction with him here, someone might find it useful: http://blog.gregfiumara.com/archives/229

  • by cnlwoo,

    cnlwoo cnlwoo Oct 29, 2013 9:48 PM in response to Castlemanic
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 29, 2013 9:48 PM in response to Castlemanic

    Nice work Apple.

  • by smedina.ism,

    smedina.ism smedina.ism Oct 30, 2013 8:35 AM in response to shellcode
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 30, 2013 8:35 AM in response to shellcode

    Thanks! This "reset" solution worked perfectly.

  • by Donna Sanclemente,

    Donna Sanclemente Donna Sanclemente Oct 30, 2013 9:08 AM in response to rwm19
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Oct 30, 2013 9:08 AM in response to rwm19

    Thank you for sharing this!

  • by cnlwoo,

    cnlwoo cnlwoo Oct 30, 2013 9:44 AM in response to shellcode
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 30, 2013 9:44 AM in response to shellcode

    This solved the problem, but I don't yet know if I've actually lost access to "synced items" as the message box warns about.

  • by BlueskyWA,

    BlueskyWA BlueskyWA Oct 30, 2013 11:41 AM in response to shellcode
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 30, 2013 11:41 AM in response to shellcode

    After many convoluted attempts to right this wrong, I was able to rid the desktop of the dreaded password for local-items text box.  I followed the instructions, but usually neglected a step and so kept getting deeper in the hold. For example, in Keychain Access, I clicked the lock only once before rebooting. That gave me a login prompt when it rebooted. Then it gave me a dialog box similar to #5 above but with a warning that something would permanently discontinue access to iCloud items. I don't like the word "permanently" so I tried another tact. The command line prompt and unix was the ultimate solution. However, at some point I deleted my passwords that were in the login-items. So it goes. At the very least I should be able to reconstruct these.

     

    Maverick for sure. I think Apple went rouge on this upgrade. 

  • by ralfjnr,

    ralfjnr ralfjnr Nov 4, 2013 2:20 PM in response to Castlemanic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 4, 2013 2:20 PM in response to Castlemanic

    I have the same issues, all I can get is the pop up box asking for a local keychain password, yet I have never entered a password......

     

    .... Now I can't get the pop up box to disappear, and I've tried all of the above, including turning off and back on again..

     

    Please help! I thought Mac's where easier and more simple than PC's - not a good experience :-(

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