MacOS – Keychain: Beachball When Visualizing Password

keychainmacospasswordpermission

I can use the passwords in the keychain when opening a program, but if I try to display the password in the keychain entry I get asked for the root password. When entering the root password the beachball is displayed and never disappears. The program does not completely hang because I can abort the operation with esc. Still while the beachball is present I can't do anything else. Other passwords which are stored in the cloud (e.g. wifi pw) can be accessed.

The file rights are:
-rw-r--r--@ 1 username staff 442368 8 Dez 18:53 username.keychain

I recently updated my Mac to El Capitan and repaired the file permissions with Disk Utility.

Best Answer

It is a problem with MagicPrefs and el capitan: https://discussions.apple.com/message/29270520#29270520

Disabling MagicPrefs does the trick.

As always after an hour trying and googling I found the answer 5min after a post ;-)

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MacOS – Keychain error -25308 while trying to add drive to Time Machine

I was having this same problem. According to discussion at this thread on Ars Technica, it’s caused by a bug in iStat Server. Are you running this?

I was, and can confirm that the work-around solution posted there of removing iStat Server and deleting the iStat Server entry in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.plist has worked for me. The relevant entry looks like this:

<key>DefaultKeychain</key>
<array>
   <dict>
      <key>DbName</key>
      <string>/Library/Application Support/iStat Server/iStatServer.keychain</string>
      <key>GUID</key>
      <string>{87191ca3-0fc9-11d4-849a-000502b52122}</string>
      <key>SubserviceType</key>
      <integer>6</integer>
   </dict>
</array>

Bjango, the developer of iStat Server, has further posted on the Ars Technica thread that a new version of iStat Server is now available. I have not independently verified that this addresses the problem, since the above work-around had already taken care of my issue, but their release notes say simply “Fixed a Keychain issue.” Both the new version and the release notes can easily be found at the iStat Server link above.

Mac – Help! Lost admin password for Mac OS X server 10.9

In conclusion, TimeMachine recovery of the entire system to the status before changing admin password worked well. I recovered the old admin password and it worked for Keychain Access as well.

In details; Just in case the recovery doesn't work and I lose the TimeMachine backups somehow, I copied the TimeMachine backup to another external drive. To do that, however, I needed admin password. So, first I had to reset the admin password.

Note: In my case, the destination for TimeMachine backup was a local partition (probably), so I didn't need network password to access it. If it were in network, for example, you would need password that has been lost at step 8. Then this procedure may not work for you. Before actually try the following steps, it may be good to see if you need password for system recovery, following http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14185 (step 5 in this page is the key), but just cancel when you are asked to choose date and time.

Open the Time Machine pane in System Preferences. Choose Time Machine > Open Time Machine Preferences…
Slide the Time Machine switch to Off.
Restart the Mac with Command + R keys held down to enter Recovery Mode.
In Recovery Mode, launch Terminal.app.
In Terminal.app, type resetpassword.
Choose the admin account and set new password. Verify it.
Warning about Keychain will appear.
Restart. Now you get admin password at the cost of loosing Keychain password. The server won't work properly any longer.
The OS will ask if you want to update Keychain password. Because you don't know the old password. You can't do that. So just choose Continue in the middle.
The system will ask Keychain passwords, but you have to ignore them.
Connect an external drive that is large enough.
If necessary, reformat the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). see http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5096
Click the icon of the new backup drive and choose Get Info from the File menu or press Command-I (⌘-I)
Make sure Ignore ownership on this volume at the bottom of the Sharing & Permissions: section is not checked.
Open a new Finder window. In the Finder sidebar, click the icon of the current backup drive.
Open a new Finder window. In the Finder sidebar, click the icon of the new backup drive.
Drag the folder Backups.backupdb on the current backup drive to the root level of the new backup drive.
Enter an administrator name and password (you needed to reset the admin password for this step), then click OK to start the copying process. This may take some time to complete because all the backups will be copied.
After the copy has completed, you can eject the eternal drive.
Restart the machine with Command and R keys held down to enter Recovery Mode.
In Recovery Mode, Select Restore from a Time Machine Backup, then click Continue.
Select the TimeMachine storage.
Select the date and time of the backup you want to restore, then follow the onscreen instructions.
In my case, I successfully recovered admin password as well as default Keychain password.

Best Answer

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MacOS – Keychain error -25308 while trying to add drive to Time Machine

Mac – Help! Lost admin password for Mac OS X server 10.9

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