Safari wants to use the "login.keychain_2" keychain

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Level 4

1,361 points

Safari wants to use the "login.keychain_2" keychain

I have hundreds of logins in a login.keychain copied over from an older Mac and renamed login.keychain_2. I have it placed in the proper folder in the new Mac next to the native login keychain. I’ve changed login.keychain_2's password in Keychain Access to the current Mac’s admin password.

However, Safari keeps asking me for the password to use it for every old site that I revisit. Sometimes (it seems sometimes but I could be wrong) that the same sites I'm visiting also keep asking for the keychain password!

In Keychain Access, I can double click a login item and change its Access Control, but there are hundreds of login items! Doing it for each one manually is no better than deleting all of them and letting my new Mac (new Mavericks, new Safari) save each one natively. This would be recalling and individually typing in hundreds maybe thousands of login names and passwords.

What else can I do?

MacOS 10.9 Mavericks

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5), and iPad4 iOS7

Posted on Dec 13, 2013 8:24 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Dec 14, 2013 8:08 AM in response to Ken2G5

Select the keychain from the list on the left side of the Keychain Access window. If the lock icon in the top left corner of the window shows that the keychain is locked, click to unlock it. You'll be prompted for the keychain password.

Right-click or control-click the keychain in the list. From the menu that pops up, select Change Settings for Keychain... In the sheet that opens, uncheck both boxes, if not already unchecked.

Select

Keychain Access ▹ Keychain First Aid

from the menu bar and repair the keychain, if necessary. Quit Keychain Access.

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Answer 2

Ken2G5 Author

Level 4

1,361 points

Dec 16, 2013 8:13 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thank you, and it seems the critical part was the keychain being locked.

However, the problem occurred again this morning when I went to one of my regular sites. So I looked in Keychain Access again, and lo and behold, the item icon shows locked again!

How should I permanently unlock it?

Problem persists. 😟

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Dec 16, 2013 9:38 AM in response to Ken2G5

At some point, you reset your keychain to default in Keychain Access. That caused your login keychain to be renamed.

Back up all data.

In Keychain Access, delete the login keychain from the keychain list. Choose Delete References when prompted, not Delete References & Files.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it, then copy the text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:

~/Library/Keychains

In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens ( command-V), and press return. A folder will open. Rename the file "login.keychain" in that folder to something like "login-old.keychain". Rename the file "login-renamed.keychain" to "login.keychain".

Back in Keychain Access, select

File ▹ Add Keychain...

from the menu bar. Add back the file now named "login.keychain". If any of your needed keychain items are missing from it, also add back the file you named "login-old.keychain". I suggest you transfer any needed items from that keychain to the login keychain, then delete it. The transfers are made by drag-and-drop in Keychain Access. You'll need to enter your password for each item transferred.

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Answer 4

Ken2G5 Author

Level 4

1,361 points

Dec 16, 2013 9:57 AM in response to Linc Davis

I will study your instructions again later, but your last sentence, "You'll need to enter your password for each item transferred" doesn't bode well. The idea was to re-use a previous keychain without having to do all that work.

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Answer 5

Ken2G5 Author

Level 4

1,361 points

Dec 17, 2013 5:57 PM in response to Linc Davis

It gets crazier than that.

If I understand correctly, you want me to transfer items from a non-default login keychain to the default one, then delete the empty one. And to do so AFTER renaming them.

By the way, that's how it was renamed in the first place — I did it manually to the file in my users library (accessible by holding down the option key, etc). It wasn't the automatic result of resetting it to default in Keychain Access, which I had also done, perhaps dubiously.

So now I've made the "login.keychain_2" the default (again?) and dragged over every visible login item from the smaller login keychain, and deleted its references. I tried renaming it in the ~users/Library/Keychains folder, but Keychain Access doesn't see it afterwards. So I kept its weird elongated name, which as a file name in Finder is "login.keychain_2.keychain."

Although the new default seems to stick as the default after repeated logouts and log back in on the Mac, even after several reboots, and Safari seems happy with the access to all login credentials in one keychain,

Every time I boot up or log into my Mac user account, there's a little box asking me for my admin login.

One time it's "Messages Agent wants to use the "login.keychain_2" keychain"

Next time it's "com.apple.iCloudHelper wants to use the "login.keychain_2" keychain"

Next time it's "iCloud blah blah blah wants to use the "login.keychain_2" keychain"

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Answer 6

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Dec 17, 2013 7:23 PM in response to Ken2G5

Choose the keychain you want to use as the default and name it "login.keychain". In Keychain Access, delete the existing login keychain (not the System keychain) and add the one you renamed.

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Answer 7

Ken2G5 Author

Level 4

1,361 points

Dec 17, 2013 8:17 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thank you for the quick reply again, and I think that's it — I had just needed to *add* the keychain back as a keychain item in Keychain Access using the add keychain menu command. Renaming files and moving them around within these rules are a sort of a little logistical puzzle. Apparently these missings items are invisible files in the same keychain.

Now I have remaining some perhaps trivial questions about how to delete and to what extent of deletion is okay.

How to get rid of the now gray-boxed "login.keychain_2" item in the left column (as shown below)?

Also perhaps trivial, I have in my users library keychain folder several other nasty name-modified keychain files like "login copy.keychain" and "login_renamed_1.keychain" etc. Don't ask how or why. But can I just put them in the trash and delete trash?

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Answer 8

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Dec 17, 2013 9:40 PM in response to Ken2G5

I have no way of knowing what's in those files, so I don't know whether it's safe to delete them. If you see all the keychain items you need in the login keychain, then you don't need anything else.

Delete the second item from the keychain list. If it won't delete, try First Aid again. As a last resort,reset the keychain (which erases all saved passwords.) You must have another record of all passwords before resetting the keychain. They will all need to be re-entered.

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Answer 9

Ken2G5 Author

Level 4

1,361 points

Dec 18, 2013 10:32 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thank you for the various tips and instructions.

Everything is working fine now, so these extraneous items only seem cosmetic.

Maybe at some future time, after many backups, I'll gamble on deleting the extra files in the keychain folder (visible only in Finder not in Keychain Access) as well as deleting the gray-boxed keychain item shown in the pic by means of the Delete References & Files button when deleting a keychain.

I don't know what's in those files either. It willl be my gamble that nothing will go wrong.

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