I have had TDE installed for over a month, but suddenly (maybe unrelated but right after installing google-earth and using it for the first time), a dialog box popped up asking me to enter my password to "unlock the login keyring" and that the password was not entered when I logged in. I cliked on "Cancel". Any idea what this is? How can I get rid of it?
Thanks,
Gianluca
----------------------------------------------------- Gianluca Interlandi, PhD gianluca@u.washington.edu +1 (206) 685 4435 http://gianluca.today/
Department of Bioengineering University of Washington, Seattle WA U.S.A. -----------------------------------------------------
I think the Google Earth installation is not unrelated. I remember experiencing something like this on my systems, not only with Google Earth (e.g. Vivaldi, Skype for Linux) and the culprit was apparently the Gnome Keyring library (a GNOME analog of TDE Wallets, but there is only one wallet and its password is the user's password) which is used by some software to store keys, etc.
Google Earth seems to store some API-specific data it uses to connect to Google servers in the Keyring.
Normally the keyring gets automatically unlocked on logon without the user even noticing. Sometimes it doesn't. This happens when the appropriate service (don't remember which) is not started upon startup. Then, the first time access is requested by one of the applications, this prompt shows. It certainly seems like this happened in your case.
Hope this helps to find the solution.
-- Mavridis Phlippe
Hi Phlippe,
Thanks for the explanation. I have a couple of questions below.
On Fri, 16 Jul 2021, Mavridis Philippe wrote:
I think the Google Earth installation is not unrelated. I remember experiencing something like this on my systems, not only with Google Earth (e.g. Vivaldi, Skype for Linux) and the culprit was apparently the Gnome Keyring library (a GNOME analog of TDE Wallets, but there is only one wallet and its password is the user's password) which is used by some software to store keys, etc.
Google Earth seems to store some API-specific data it uses to connect to Google servers in the Keyring.
Does this not cause any security issues? I mean does the password not get stored on a google server? Also, would I enter the same password as my user account? I normally do not setup a TDE Wallet or GNOME keyring.
Gianluca
Normally the keyring gets automatically unlocked on logon without the user even noticing. Sometimes it doesn't. This happens when the appropriate service (don't remember which) is not started upon startup. Then, the first time access is requested by one of the applications, this prompt shows. It certainly seems like this happened in your case.
Hope this helps to find the solution.
-- Mavridis Phlippe
----------------------------------------------------- Gianluca Interlandi, PhD gianluca@u.washington.edu +1 (206) 685 4435 http://gianluca.today/
Department of Bioengineering University of Washington, Seattle WA U.S.A. -----------------------------------------------------
Does this not cause any security issues? I mean does the password not get stored on a google server? Also, would I enter the same password as my user account? I normally do not setup a TDE Wallet or GNOME keyring.
The password should be the same as your user account – at least this is what always worked for me in that case.
The password is not sent anywhere – it's just the way the Keyring protects the data it stores. The data sent is the data stored in the Keyring, and this data is locally protected by the password. So, probably no security issues here.
And, you didn't have to set up GNOME Keyring – it quietly sets up itself, most probably the first time a program tries to use it.
You could theoretically safely uninstall this library. Google Earth would be probably unharmed. But, speaking from experience, some Chromium-based browsers might react badly to such a sudden change and some others might keep forgetting credentials and bug you with a login prompt every time they start (Skype).
-- Mavridis Philippe
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Gianluca Interlandi -
Mavridis Philippe