SecurityAgent was unable to create requested mechanism builtin:unlock-keychain

Question

SecurityAgent was unable to create requested mechanism builtin:unlock-keychain

I have been getting this error intermittently on my new MacBook Pro running Catalina. It’s usually preceded by an interminable series of “<process> wants to use the ‘login’ keychain” dialog boxes (where <process> can be a half-dozen things).

I’ve (1) reinstalled Catalina, (2) deleted my entire keychain (ouch, that hurt!), and (3) made sure that I have read/write permission to everything in ~/Library/Keychains. Everything will run normally for a while until I start getting the keychain requests. Eventually, I get the SecurityAgent notice, and all I can do at that point is reboot.

incredibly frustrating. Any ideas?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jul 21, 2020 4:02 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Jul 29, 2020 8:39 AM in response to Stephen Fleming

I have exactly the same problem, started after upgrading to Catalina 10.15.6 and VirtualBox 6.1.12 r139181 (Qt5.6.3).

I'm cannot be sure but seems that the problem happens (about twice per day) when I have a Virtualbox VM open; if not it seems there are no problems.

I was used to have a very stable MacBook system, now it's very frustrating to have this type of instability.

@Apple please find a solution

Reply

Answer 2

Aug 18, 2020 2:06 PM in response to Stephen Fleming

I'm constantly getting this message and having to reboot. I also have Catalina 10.15.6 but I don't see any other common elements as to what I'm doing when It happens. It's really hampering productivity! Is there anything found to fix it?

My error message:

unrecoverable error security agent was unable to create requested mechanism builtin:unlock-keychain

Reply

SecurityAgent was unable to create requested mechanism builtin:unlock-keychain

Similar questions