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Passphrase in Apple's Keychain Access

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Angelo Cirino

17 Sep, 2015 05:12 PM

Hi, hoped to find my passphrase in the OS Keychain Access but was not able to find it. I've searched for gnupg and by date and could not find it. I am using Yosemite.

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Steve on 17 Sep, 2015 05:18 PM

   

   Hi Angelo,

   are you sure you actually did store your passphrase in the OS X keychain? You should also be able to search for your fingerprint.

   But since you say you cannot find an entry when search for "GnuPG" this sounds a lot like no OpenPGP passphrase has been stored in your OS X keychain.

   All the best,
   steve

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2. 2 Posted by Angelo Cirino on 17 Sep, 2015 05:26 PM

   

   Hi Steve, I should have two pass phrases stored, one for a key I created last year and one for another key that I created today just to test the storing of the passphrase. The key from last year was certainly stored since I used it before upgrading to Yosemite.

   I have the checkbox active in GPGPreferences > Settings to "Store passphrases in OS X Keychain by default".

   Searching for the fingerprint didn't work either.

   Angelo

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3. 3 Posted by Mento on 18 Sep, 2015 08:42 AM

   

   Hi Angelo,

   what's the output from the following command?
   

   defaults read org.gpgtools.common KeychainPath
   

   Are you able to sign or decrypt with these keys after a restart, without entering the passphrase?

   Normally you should be able to find the passphrase with Keychain Access, when searching for "GnuPG". So this case is a bit curious.

   Regards, Mento

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4. 4 Posted by Angelo on 18 Sep, 2015 09:43 PM

   

   Hi Mento, the output shows this:

   The domain/default pair of (/Users/aacirino/Library/Preferences/org.gpgtools.common, KeychainPath) does not exist

   I am not able to decrypt without the passphrase.

   Regards

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5. 5 Posted by Mento on 22 Sep, 2015 08:48 AM

   

   Hi Angelo,

   this means, your passphrase is not stored in the OS X keychain.

   To save a passphrase in the keychain do the following:
   1.) Sign or decrypt something.
   2.) Enter your passphrase in pinentry-mac.
   3.) Make sure "Save in keychain" is checked in the pinentry dialog.

   Regards, Mento

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6. Support Staff 6 Posted by Steve on 10 Feb, 2016 12:26 PM

   

   Closing, since no further user feedback was received. Should your problem persist, feel free to re-open this discussion any time.

   All the best, steve

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7. Steve closed this discussion on 10 Feb, 2016 12:26 PM.