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Old 04-16-2003, 06:44 PM   #1
martinx
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Join Date: Apr 2003
Posts: 6
Angry Keychain "forgets" my wireless key!

I've got my 802.11b wireless base unit connection set up with a 128-bit hex key. When I first connected via Airport I was prompted to enter the key and I checked the box to add the key to my keychain.

Imagine my surprise when several days later I was suddenly prompted for this information! Fortunately I had written the key down, but it took me over a half an hour to find it.

This is the only key that keychain has ever forgot, and it is also the most dangerous one for me to lose, because there is no way that I am aware of to reset the key in the base unit if its ever lost. (It's not an Apple unit btw...) The fact that keychain remembers the password lulls one into the sense that they have the key stored somewhere.

Since this time the keychain has "forgotten" my wireless key a couple more times, and so I created a back up copy of my keychain (using cp). However it appears that this won't work, as when the latest incident happened and i tried to replace the keychain file with the old copy, keychain acted like there were NO keys at all.

Anybody have similar problems or know what the fix might be? It doesn't seem to be related to corruption, as I've never tried to add the key twice. I was wondering if maybe the wireless key has some sort of timeout, though I haven't seen any hint of that in the keychain manager. Should I be wary of other keys getting lost this way?
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Old 04-23-2003, 06:49 PM   #2
martinx
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Join Date: Apr 2003
Posts: 6
Thumbs down Why does OS X try to delete keys in other keychains?

Well here is an update.

Yesterday I was having some problems with my base unit, basically the connection was intermittent, Airport would see the signal, then it would be gone, and then it would be there again, and then go, and so forth. I think maybe the base unit was overheating. Anyways, this wasn't related to the keychain problem. However suddenly I started to get prompted for the password *every* *time* I tried to connect. Of course by the time I entered all those digits (26 of em, apparently), the connection was lost again, and so it told me I had entered invalid information. Repeat that 10 times. (frustrating!)

Anyway, once the base unit was working properly again, I got the idea to copy the base station (wireless) key into another keychain. So basically, I duplicated all the keys into a new key chain, and *locked* the duplicate keychain.

Now today I suddenly get the following message:
----
MacOS X wants access to keychain "my Keychain backup". Please enter your
keychain password or phrase.

Application: /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app
----

I *denied* this request and went and looked, and behold, my original wireless key was *GONE* but the backup was not!

My theory is that Mac OS is trying to delete the keychain whenever it detects some kind of problem with the connection. I notice that frequently when I connect to the wireless that it will connect and then after about 5 second disconnect and I have to reconnect manually again, and then everything is ok. Maybe that has something to do with it. But why oh why is SystemUIServer.app trying to look for and/or delete the wireless key from my backup keychain? That's just naughty!
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