Ubuntu Tutorials

This post is in part an update to my previous post on resetting the gnome keyring, and partly due to my continued laziness, efficiency push. I want my machine to do everything for me anymore. The less tedious work I have to do the more actual work I can get done, right? This post will walk you through setting up your machine to auto-authenticate the gnome-keyring at login. One less password you have to enter when you login to your machine.

Installing the Package

We’ll need one tiny package for this to be supported. Using your favorite package manager install libpam-keyring, or use the following command:

sudo aptitude install libpam-keyring

Configuring PAM

Once this is installed we need to add a few lines to a configuration file. Follow this next step carefully. If you put the line in the wrong place it may cause problems with other parts of machine authentication.

Edit the /etc/pam.d/gdm file and append the following line to the end of the file:

@include common-pamkeyring

At this point the gnome-keyring will be handed your login password and, if they are the same, will be authenticated at login. If your login password and gnome-keyring password are different this will not work. Options? Set the passwords to match by first resetting the gnome-keyring password (this will wipe any saved keyring data) or come up with a solution that will authenticate one with the other, even if they are not the same. The latter solution I would be interested in, but am not aware of.

Thanks to Thad for the origins of this post, although slightly different between FC6 and Feisty.