Ubuntu – How to recover/reset forgotten Gnome Keyring Password

12.04gnome-keyring

I am on Ubuntu and I have forgotten the password for my Gnome Keyring (yes, stupid me, I know). Any way I can get it back? I have already looked at this link, but it says it's not possible if my home directory is encrypted and unfortunately my home directory is encrypted.

Best Answer

Resetting everything (delete all passwords and start new keyring):

rm ~/.local/share/keyrings/login.keyring

Then, log out and log back in. Ubuntu will automatically create a new login.keyring for you.

Or

Navigate to Places > Home. Press Ctrl + H to view "hidden files". Navigate to .local > share > keyrings and delete login.keyring

Using the same keyring (resetting keyring password but keeping old passwords in keyring):

  1. Make a backup of the keyring

     cd ~/.local/share/keyrings/
 cp login.keyring login.keyring.backup

and after that delete login.keyring file

    rm ~/.local/share/keyrings/login.keyring

  1. Create a new keyring file from Gnome Keyring with the name login

  2. Replace the new keyring file with the backup of the old keyring file

     cd ~/.local/share/keyrings/
 mv login.keyring.backup login.keyring

Note: before Ubuntu 12.10 the path to the keyrings folder was ~/.gnome2/keyrings/ instead of ~/.local/share/keyrings/.

Related Question