Keychain access menu bar icon shows incorrect status

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Level 1

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Keychain access menu bar icon shows incorrect status

I recently enabled the "Show Status in Menu Bar" option in Keychain Access. I have my Login keychain set to stay unlocked, no auto-lock or anything like that. But after a while, the lock icon in the menu bar always becomes locked (and it shows the option 'Unlock Keychain "Login"' instead of 'Lock Keychain "Login"' when i click on it); so that suggests that the keychain is indeed locked. But it's not (if I open Keychain Access, it shows it's in fact unlocked). I confirmed that it's unlocked by doing "security dump-keychain -a ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain", and it worked without asking for any password.

Is this a bug, or what?

Macbook Pro (mid-2009), Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Sep 23, 2010 4:16 PM

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Answer 1

SBeattie2

Level 2

221 points

Nov 1, 2010 8:21 PM in response to korogorov

I also recently started experimenting with Key Chain Access and have enabled the menu bar status. I have my keychain set NOT to lock after 5 and NOT to lock when sleeping. The padlock icon does remain unlocked the entire time as far as I can tell. (I actually have several issues when I allow the keychain to automatically lock (after 5 min or when sleeping - or both). Have you gone into "edit" - change settings for key chain login - and verified that the two check boxes for lock after 5 minutes and lock when sleeping are "unchecked". Have you tried clicking on Keychain Access tab - then selecting Keychain First Aid - then select Verify - then click Start. This will validate your key chain. And lastly, have you tried (if you don't mind temporarily losing your keychain contents) resetting your login keychain back to factory defaults? Do this by selecting KeyChain Access - Preferences - Reset My Default Keychain (your existing login keychain will be renamed). One last question - are you syncing anything with Mobile Me? My keychain issues seem to surface when I re-enable mobile me sync.

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