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Retrieving Keychain from TimeMachine

Hello,


I've recently moved to Snow Leopard (from Leopard). I want to retrieve login and passwords of all my online accounts, which are stored in Keychain. When I open it from the backup file in the timemachine I can't able to.


Is there a way to bring back the old keychain from timemachine which was made when I was using Leopard? Should copy/paste do the job?


Thanks for your time.

MacBook, 2.4 GHz, Mac OS X (10.6.7), 4 GB (1067 MHz DDR3), IC2D

Posted on May 11, 2011 10:45 AM

Reply
12 replies

Aug 12, 2012 5:05 PM in response to poubell

OK.. I"ve found the answer (at least it has worked for me).


I've retrieved file "login.keychain" from the Snow Leapard (SL) to Mountain Lion (ML).


Open TimeMachine drive in a Finder > Goto the latest version of backup (or whichever date you wanna retrieve from) > Users > {your Home folder} > Library > Keychains > here you'll find a file "login.keychain" (of course without quotes). Copy the file "login.keychain" and paste it on your desktop.


I would change the name of the file just to distinguish it from the current file. The easy would be "login2.keychain" (without quotes). Double click on it and it will open with keychain.app automatically. On the left top panel you'll see login2 name, click on it an it will have all your previous logins with passwords.


You will need to put your previous password (the password you used to open it previously) to see the login details.


Hope this helps.

Jan 20, 2013 1:30 AM in response to R C-R

DNA1977,


A side question: I have a similar problem and accessing Time Machine for the date of the back up desired. But my particular problem is when I go to the "~/Home/" folder, I cannot see "/Library" much less the "/Keychains" folder I'm seeking.


I'm afraid Time Machine didn't keep that folder -- but this can't be true; there were no settings to do anything that specific. I know some folders can't be seen. How do I change the setting that allows me to see that folder?


When I use "Go to folder..." from the Finder with that specific location (adding in the presumably hidden folders) it reports back the location does not exist.


Thanks for any help you can provide!

Chris

Mar 2, 2014 1:50 PM in response to Chris in NY

As Christopher rigby1 said that it is now hidden.


I use Terminal to make them visible by putting in command: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES


After that put another command: killall Finder


The "killall Finder" command is to restart/refresh Finder.


After that you will able to see the hidden files. Once done you would want to hide the hidden files again by using the command: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO


Then another command: killall Finder

Sep 23, 2014 4:13 PM in response to DNA1977

I just wanted to say that his also worked for me on OSX 10.9 Maverick.

I mounted Time Machine and then entered the directory via terminal.


/Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups/Backups.backupdb/<SYSTEMNAME>/Latest/User/<MYUSER>/Library/Keychains/lo gin.keychains


<SYSTEMNAME> being the system that was backed up

<MYUSER> being the actual user you are recovering for


Regards,

Retrieving Keychain from TimeMachine

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