AlexLB
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Peculiar dialog PASSWORD_ALERT...

I am occasionally experiencing a situation where my system seems to go south, with one of the primary indicators being dialogs appearing that have labels like PASSWORD_ALERT_TITLE_WITH_USERNAME_OSX and dialog text of PASSWORD_ALERT_MESSAGE_WITH_USERNAME_OSX (see picture). As someone who trained as a developer, this is screaming that something is deeply wrong somewhere. When I google these labels, I get nothing.Screen Shot 2016-02-17 at 8.38.39 PM.png

 

When this happens, appears to also come along with a dialog ‘Keychain Not Found’ with text ‘Keychain “login” cannot be found to store xxxxx’. The xxxxx item can be different - not always same username (appears to be a username for one of the Internet services/web sites that I use).

 

If I reboot, these things go away - I do still have a login Keychain, it just gets lost temporarily.

 

One previous time this happened, I got a message that SecurityAgent quit unexpectedly, but did not see that this time.

 

Note that this system was done as a clean build for El Capitan (now on 10.11.3), running on a MacBook Pro Retina 13” Mid 2014 w/16 GB RAM. I am not happy with El Capitan - I like the features but find that the system becomes unstable. Typical symptom - happens much more often than this weird keychain/password alert issue - is that Mail seems to complain about Account Error. Then I may notice sluggish performance. Attempting to quit apps leads me to see the all the core Apple apps - Mail, Calendar, Messages, maybe Safari - are all refusing to quit. This seems to be worse after sleeping overnight. Have tried sleeping connected to Ethernet than WiFi to see if some issue with Power Nap. I realize this issue belongs in a separate thread but thought I would mention in case related to above.

 

In terms of any unusual systems software installed, the system is being managed with Casper Suite and has Symantec Endpoint running.

 

Would appreciate any solutions, clues or guesses on the peculiar dialogs (or the other issues I have mentioned). Unfortunately my experience has me hesitating to recommend El Cap to other people - would like to see my system become more stable again!

 

Thanks,
Alex

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Feb 17, 2016 9:11 PM

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AlexLB

Q: Peculiar dialog PASSWORD_ALERT...

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  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Feb 18, 2016 3:54 AM in response to AlexLB
    Level 9 (50,793 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 18, 2016 3:54 AM in response to AlexLB

    i would uninstall all of the supposed "security" crapware and test. All of it seems to provide little added security, but large amounts of problems.

  • by lobi_da,

    lobi_da lobi_da Sep 29, 2016 11:54 AM in response to AlexLB
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 29, 2016 11:54 AM in response to AlexLB

    I too have this problem and can't figure out where it is originating from.  I don't think removing the "security crapware" as suggested below will solve it, and I wouldn't be able to test it since I can't reproduce the issue.  Can you provide any further information AlexLB?  I can state that my user had Finder, Chrome, Outlook, Slack, Word, and Adobe Acrobat DC applications opened up at the time without any .dmg or usb drives mounted to the FS.

  • by Garrett Davidson,

    Garrett Davidson Garrett Davidson Oct 18, 2016 8:06 AM in response to AlexLB
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 18, 2016 8:06 AM in response to AlexLB

    I just received this message for the first time on macOS Sierra 10.12.1 Beta (16B2548a). Shortly after seeing the dialog, I tried to open a new file in VLC and received the Unix error too many open files. I'm wondering if some rogue program on my computer ate up all of the available file descriptors and prevented opening of new files. In that case, not being able to "find" the login keychain actually means it just can't open it, or anything else. This would also explain why restarting fixes the issue.