Upgraded to Lion, now keychain isn't behaving the same.

munvig, If your keychain is not working for any reason, you can try a repair.

To do this, Open Keychain Access in Lion and in the KeyChain Access menu select "Keychain First Aid".

In the window that pops up you can do a verify or a repair on the whole file.

I have found many users have had keychain corruptions on upgrades from Leopard to Snow Leopard as well as from Snow Leopard to Lion.

Hope that helps.

Hi Bruce,

I'm having similar issues with Keychain. I performed the verify and repair as you suggested and did indeed find there were errors that were corrected, however I'm still having problems. When I used to connect to our smb server at work, it would automatically enter my username and password. After upgradign to Lion, everyday I come in to work with my laptop, I have to reenter my login credentials to connect. I click "remember in keychain," and I can see the keychain file in Keychain, but it never uses it. Any other suggestions as to why this is happening?

Thanks!

I have also experienced some of these issues in the past, but since Lion was installed on my MacBookPro things have gotten much worse, to the point now that ssl secured pages just won't load any longer (browsers say no response) and Keychain Access does not even work (it remains stuck for ever, and I need to kill the app to get back in control.) What the heck are we supposed to do ? I don't seem to find very credible fixes, except re-instaling from scratch... Now what kind of a fix is that ? Is this Mac or Windows ? And what guarantee do I have that things will work better once I reinstalled the whole thing ?

I still have the same problems (see my older posting) - sometimes the keychain works, sometimes it doesn´t. I did the first aid check (several times in the last months) - it always says there are no problems found! (So if there are no problems I don´t want to start the repair function... Not without saving all my entries before - just for sure...)

I called the apple phone support (Austria/Germany) some weeks ago, the guy on the phone said they didn´t hear about such massive problems with the keychain (?). The only idea he had was that I should delete all entries in the keychain (like do a reset) and then start again with typing everything in... This cannot be the only solution, can it? This will cost me at least an hour!!!

MIght have found the solution. Open keychain access. Double click the account name that's being the problem. Click on the "access control" tab. Select "allow all applications to access this item". Enter account password. I did this for my mail accounts and so far so good after closing and reopening the mail app. Might be the " confirm" before allowing access" default value that's messing up the works.

Good luck!

Hi Lieiti, thanks for the suggestion but it didn't solve my problem. I checked my server's keychain access and the problem keychain already had "allow all applications..." selected. I even tried deleting the keychain item, performed a keychain first aid repair, and then added the keychain back by logging back onto my server, making sure to check "remember this password". When I check the keychain item, sure enough "Confirm before allowing access" was selected with the appropriate "NetAuthSysAgent" application specified below it. I tried loggin on again, and it still wouldn't remember the password, so I switched it to "Allow all applications..." like you suggested, and still no luck. Keychain is completely broken...

Hmm, maybe try to use Pacifist to reinstall keychain if its even possible, or maybe reinstall Lion over your current install without erasing, if that is possible as well.

Greets

After beating my head against the wall concerning this problem I noticed that the only time I lost all my Sarfari passwords is when I "Reset SafarI".

Now I am just a dumb old trucker searching for the elusive solution to this Lion/Keychain/Safari problem, it struck me that in Safari/Preferences/Auto Fill by the check marked "User Names and Passwords" there is a button that says "Edit". I clicked that critter and there in a drop down window was listed all my "websites" with correponding "usernames". A cursory check of Keychain revealed the same entries. I got all happy.

I knew I was going to get angry after reloading all my passwords but I had to check, I "Reset Safari" and "Clear Cache" and passowrds gone not only in that Safari Preferences box but keychain also. I unchecked the following entries under "Reset Safari".

"Remove Saved Names and Passwords"

"Remove Other Autofill Form Text"

And that seems to have solved my problem.

Just as an aside I use Onyx I unchecked cleaning of form values you know, just to make sure.

I hope this helps y'all it has kept me from going back to Snow Leopard.

Just an update for anyone reading this post. I just upgraded to Lion 10.7.3 and BAM! All my keychains are working again! It seems Apple figured out the problem. I'm a happy user again. 🙂

And yet I've just started having problems. Still, this thread has been useful.

How do you reset your keychain? 😢

Did not help me at all. Actually it keeps popping up even after I hit cancel. 😢

Please tell me what you did. I just installed Lion tonight and I lost all of my keychain passwords. 😠

Have you found out how to satisfy Keychain?

ldlewile, did you try my instructions above about repairing the keychain?

Also, make sure you have patched to the latest version of Lion (10.7.3 at the time of this writing). 10.7 to 10.7.2 have problems with the keychain getting corrupted. It often gets to a point where you cannot open the Keychain access program at all. This means your system cannot store or retrieve anything in the keychain.

We see this often on our campus with users who do not patch.

A summary of steps to take:

If the Keychain Access program will launch:

1. From the Apple Menu run Software Update and do all system updates.

2. After rebooting, open Keychain Access and run the Keychain First Aid (located in the Keychain Access menu) to repair the login keychain.

If Keychain Access will not launch :

A) Reboot holding command + R to get into recovery mode.

B) Run Disk Utility and repair the hard drive and then run repair permissions.

C) Reboot into Lion as normal

D) From the Apple Menu run Software Update and do all system updates.

E) Reboot and open Keychain Access and follow step 2 above

Let us know if that fixes it.