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cannot eject usb stick in os x containing a private keychain containing only user created secure notes

cannot eject usb stick in os x containing a private keychain containing only user created secure notes, because os x claims lots of other apps are using the said private keychain ?

and would love a resolution to this problem as its beginning to wind me up every day, so let me explain my issue:

I have a usb stick I connect to my computers, on this usb stick I have a personal keychain for passwords in secure note items only, starting under snow leopard when I try to eject said usb stick containing my secure note item private keychain, it refuses to claiming my usb stick by x open application which by the looks of it seems only to be those apps with net access ? they are claimed claim to be using the private keychain on my usb stick and refuse to allow me to eject the usb stick.

I have verified which apps with lsof grep, but sadly, it will not go into details as to which keychain secure note item they are claiming use of, it just says they claiming use of that whole keychain on the USB key. Now if I quit all the programs until im running just the finder, I can always eject the USB stick containing the private keychain. But obviously this is a total pain everytime i may need to plug and and unplug this USB stick to have to quit all open applications ?

The thing that is ultra confusing is that the keychain in question on the USB stick only contains secure note items for my private use storing logins and passwords and things, and none of the secure notes can have been setup by the apps themselves, as apps in my understanding would not create secure notes in my private keychain ? but somehow theyre still claiming rights over my private keychain ? I have also tried deleting the keychain from the list and removing references only and quitting keychain. the other apps in question Mail / Google / NetAuthAgent (was doing some screen sharing at the time i tested it) all still think they have dibs rights over my private keychain of secure notes, even though they should be having nothing to do with it ? its one thing for them to store some stuff in the login keychain, but dibs over my private keychain should not be included in that access ?

I think this must be some kind of bug in keychain in snow leopard and later or something because I didnt suffer this in leopard ? its ridiculous for an app to be claiming rights over a keychain theyve never used ? I think apple have simplified this such that all apps claim some kind of right over all keychains that keychain acess knows off regardless of whether they have used that keychain at all, but if that were the case you would have thought removing keychain access's knowledge of my private keychain would resolve the issue but apparently not ?

Message was edited by: ancientscream errata

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Apr 13, 2013 9:30 AM

36 replies

Apr 13, 2013 4:01 PM in response to gordguide

ok will test that, I have noted one thing, i turned on the keychain menu item on the top bar from within preferences, and I can see that in the keychain access column on the left the keychain in question is showing as unlocked, but in the keychain menu bar status the keychain in question is showing as locked ie it offers me the opportunity to unlock it.

crikey now something even wierder is happening its now saying >

"access to this item is restricted"

and wont let me even enter a password to view the contents of the secure notes any longer ! gonna have to restart the machine and keychain, this is boiling my brain ? 😉 might be time to sleep on it. luckily I have a backup of the file.

Apr 13, 2013 4:04 PM in response to ancientscream

argh I think the

"access to this item is restricted"

is its way of saying i force ejected the USB stick earlier not a problem I think

will the test the lock timeout and see whether that helps, will report back, seriously dude cheers for your input.

Apr 13, 2013 4:07 PM in response to ancientscream

Run Keychain First Aid before you do anything else.

If you've shut down already, reboot and then run KFA.

It's at Keychain Access: Keychain First Aid in the menu bar (on 10.8x) but I seem to recall it being a separate app on older systems. Will be in Applications/Utilites if that's the case.

Apr 13, 2013 4:16 PM in response to ancientscream

Oh christ scared myself there … unplugged and re-plugged the usb key back in after the force eject, and I then opened up the keychain file on it in keychain access and the entire thing was empty ;( tried repairing it no joy …

luckily i made a backup before playing around with this but it scared me ;( strangely the empty keychain file and the functioning one both have the same file size 1.2Mb luckily the backup actually appears to contain all the secure notes still thank god, well im hitting the hay now, tnx for all the help, i think i'll just deal with as is, until ive got more time in life to investigate whats going on. Although previosuly I have had keychain lose me the odd secure note which is why once ive left this specific keychain to remain unlocked once opened as I swear the other issue of it seeming to randomly not save the odd secure note, was due to it locking itself whilst editing a secure note or something which is why i always leave it open once ive unlocked it as i think its more reliable that way.

Apr 13, 2013 4:26 PM in response to ancientscream

Yes, I still had issues with Secure Notes losing data (showing up blank) under Snow Leopard. Which is why I always used a copy of the keychain, not the original.

Although it's a little early to say without reservations, 10.8x seems to treat them properly.

Apr 24, 2013 3:59 PM in response to gordguide

Gordguide just wanted to say thanks for all your input, I did managed to resolve the keychain issue on the USB stick issue in the end, which seemed to revolve around somewhere in the vicinity of deleting references to the keychain in keychain access and then deleting the keychain itself from the USB stick copying a new copy onto the stick with a slightly different name, then removing its reference in the keychain access, renaming it and then reopening it in keychain, somewhere in that path it decided to stop refusing to allow me to eject the stick containing the private keychain,

my suggestion to others would be to backup the keychain delete it from its location on the usb stick and all references etc and copy it back and try again.

cannot eject usb stick in os x containing a private keychain containing only user created secure notes