plcmms
Level 1 (4 points)
Desktops

Q: Question (two really) about Keychain

I'm not having a problem now, but I'm wondering if someone can help me understand something with Keychain.

 

The other day, while trying to learn more about Keychain, I changed my password for keychain "login".  After using the computer for a few minutes I changed the password back to my original password.

 

The next day after the computer awoke from sleep a box popped up with "Mac OS wants to use the "login" keychain.  Please enter the keychain password."

 

When I tried to type my password in the "Password:" field it would not take anything I was typing.  It was as if my keyboard was not working, though I know it was since I could type in other places.  I could not get rid of the box and it was always in front of everything else on the display.  I think I had only Safari and Mail running and I was probably using Safari to google this problem and Mail was running in the background.

 

I think (I'm having a little difficulty remembering my exact steps) I ended up logging out and back in to get rid of this box, however, every time the computer came out of its sleep this box popped back up (I'm sure about this, though).

 

I finally used Time Machine to restore an older login.keychain and metadata.keychain to my ~/Library/Keychains folder to fix this issue.  I no longer get the pop up box.

 

I would like to know why I was getting this pop up box.  What did I do wrong.  I thought I had reverted back to my original password, which is my login password.  Could I have mistyped that password and that was the problem?

 

And, why was it not accepting text in the "password:" field when I typed my password?

 

Thanks for any help.

Posted on Jan 30, 2014 2:52 PM

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plcmms

Q: Question (two really) about Keychain

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Eric Root,

    Eric Root Eric Root Jan 31, 2014 12:38 PM in response to plcmms
    Level 9 (74,243 points)
    iTunes
    Jan 31, 2014 12:38 PM in response to plcmms

    It sounds like the com.apple.keychainaccess.plist may have gotten corrupted.

     

    Sometimes running Keychain Access/First Aid can help isolate problems or you can reset the keychain.

     

    Keychain Reset

  • by plcmms,

    plcmms plcmms Jan 31, 2014 7:17 PM in response to Eric Root
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 31, 2014 7:17 PM in response to Eric Root

    Thanks for the reply, Eric

     

    I didn't think about deleting the plist.  You think that might have been causing the pop up or not allowing the text input into the Password: field?   WIsh I had done that to see.  I still have not had a reocurrance of the pop up since restoring those two files, but just in case I deleted the plist files anyway, as you mentioned.

     

    I also ran the First Aid and, oddly enough, it did not find any problems.

     

    I did read about resetting Keychain but was warned that I would lose all my existing keychain passwords, and I have a bunch, mostly Airport network passwords of friends I help with their Macs, so I decided to use the reset as a very last resort, which I never had to use.

  • by Eric Root,

    Eric Root Eric Root Feb 1, 2014 8:41 AM in response to plcmms
    Level 9 (74,243 points)
    iTunes
    Feb 1, 2014 8:41 AM in response to plcmms

    You are welcome.