After I’d changed the password of my user account on my laptop’s Ubuntu install, Evolution kept on bothering me asking the password to unlock the keyring:
To unlock it, it required me to input my old password. Funny enough, if you change your user password, Ubuntu doesn’t change the keyring master password. After Googling around a bit, there are several blog and forum posts that point to ways of changing the keyring’s master password using seahorse, for example this one. However, all information and screenshots I found seem to be outdated; I was unable to find the “Gnome Keyring” tab everyone is talking about. After playing around with my version of seahorse, I was able to find out where this option has been moved. I don’t know in which version of seahorse this has changed, but what I do know is that that version of seahorse with its new password change interface is included in Jaunty Jackalope.
So for those of you who are reading this to figure out how to change your keyring password with Ubuntu 9.04, here goes: open seahorse via “Applications -> Accessories -> Passwords and Encryption Keys.” Click on the “Passwords” tab, and now you need the secret trick: right-click on the “Passwords: login” item and choose “Change Password“:
If you change the password for the login passwords set to the same password as your user account, Gnome will automatically unlock your keyring during login. Yay!
46 Comments
Thanks a lot for the tip!
It worked beautifully.
Hear s the command you guys are looking for
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rm -rf ~/.gnome2/keyrings/
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type your password after the command bingo ! done !
KeV!N
That indeed works fine, unless you have other passwords stored in your keyring. If you have, you wipe them too and have to re-enter them at some point as well. I would rather do it The Right Way(tm) just to be sure.
Thanks a lot! Works perfectly.
Brilliant! Thank you very much.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!
I have looked for this solution forever now!
Great!!!
Tnx
Wow, never would have figured that out myself. Thank you so much!
apparently it doesn’t work when you use automatic login
It should. Probably you have used the wrong password. PAM will use the same password to unlock your keyring as it uses for your user account to automatically login.
Thanks a lot for the tip saved me from a really annoying procedure.
Great! Thanks
YES!!! THANKS!!! THIS WORKED PERFECTLY!
how about old password??? what should i type on there
The user password you had before you changed your password, leading to problems unlocking the Gnome keyring. If you’ve changed your password multiple times already, you probably need to use the very first password you used when you created the user account.
SUPER!!! Indeed I’ve been stumbling upon old versions of how to do this. Finally a solution! Thanks!
Thank you I’ve found the perfect solution so far
It doesn’t change the password…
I tried with the initial password, the user-login password, the actual keyring password; the key actually unlocks with the actual keyring password, it never gives an error message but it never ACTUALLY CHANGES the keyring password; it just won’t change…
Help..?
Just putted it to my private tips. Thanks.
Hurrah, I killed the keyring!
In my windows for password there was 2 chapters.
One is for wifi wep
the other was for the keyring. This keyring bothered me by rexuesting its password before to allow wifi to connect…I just selected it, and: Edition Edition>Supprimer
Now my Ubuntu starts without any password, and readily connect the mailer.
And if you just want to change the password of the keyring, you could kill it, and the File>New…..
Just wanted to say thx.. You saved me a lot of troubles.
But I blame seahorse and also gnome keyring developers for not making intuitive interface for changing passwords …hope they fix that soon
Wow, thanks, I’ve been looking all over for this and couldn’t find it on the Ubuntu website. This really should be fixed so that when you change the login password it changes your keyring, or at least tells you how!
This really good. You save my day. I spent hours last night, but this is the main solution for my email and wireless connection problems. Keep the work hard.
Just wanted to say thx……….
Excellent article. Thanks for the tip.
Seems as if this is finally integrated in 10.04!
That would be really nice. I haven’t tried myself yet. I did upgrade to 10.04 last week, and I did get my company’s half-yearly password-will-expire-soon email, so I’m about to find out. I’ll post my findings.
Wow… this is a REALLY BAD UI design. Who would have figured this out? It’s a folder, for crying out loud. Very un-intuitive.
That worked beautifully!!.. thanks so much.
Thanks a bunch. This has been bugging me for a week or so.
thanks!!
Great … it worked out!
PERFECT THANK YOU!
Thanks you very much. !!!
On Ubuntu 10.10 it is under System > Preferences
Dear Ubuntu and/or Gnome,
The ability to change the keyring pw is HIDDEN. I just installed ubuntu 10.10 and decided to change the password, then after reboot I get a message to enter my OLD password to unlock the keyring! Then I have to google around to find out how to change the keyring password?? What did you expect users to do if they changed their password? Enter TWO passwords every time they logged in?
Simple fix 1: Make ‘master keyring password’ show up as an entry in Seahorse. Or better yet,
simple fix 2: when changing login pw, ask if user wants to change keyring pw too. Or, if these are too challenging,
simple fix 3: copy&paste this post into your help system and put a link to it in the “enter keyring pw” dialogue.
I used to like ubuntu, but this is one of five bugs I’ve had to deal with within 48 hr of installing Maverick.
Dear Alfred,
I agree with you that this seahorse master password thing is a bit funny, however, this is the wrong place to complain… Maybe you should file your complaints at the Ubuntu community. For more information see:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs
right-click – I missed that before reading about it on your site, thanks a lot !!
In Ubuntu 10.10 gnome one should follow “System -> Preferences -> Passwords and (Encryption) Keys.” I am not sure about the word Encryption, since it is missing in my language.
I have the same password on both the keyring and my login, however it always has asked for the keyring password, or at least since I used this machine to demonstrate # passwd user.
I have followed your lead here, and I guess I just have to reboot and see if replacing password A with password A will actually solve the issue. It took the password update without comment, so I have high hopes it will work.
Didn’t work. Maybe I have to change my keyring password to something else, and then change it back again.
Thanks alot, Iit worked fine on Lucid .
Esta bueno. Muchos tacos!
Thanks a lot for this excellent and short guide!
This Problem exists on 10.10. Thanks for the tip