I am a systems engineer with about 17 years of experience with Macintoshes. I have been using Mac OSX for a year and a half. I am mildly familiar with UNIX. But I would not categorize myself as a UNIX expert.
I am running an unmodified Mac G5 on OS 10.2.8. For a year and a half, Mail has been able to log into my mail account without any action on my part. Two weeks ago that changed.
1) If I start the Mail application, 2 warning windows open saying that Mail wants permission to decrypt the mail password item from my keychain.
2) If I click "Always Allow" on either warning window, the access fails and I must manually type in the login information. Mail has been set up to save my password... this apparently does not stop Mail from attempting to get the password from the keychain.
3) If I click "Allow Once", on each window. Mail is allowed to access the keychain.
4) I have opened Keychain Access utility and examined the mail password entry. The keychain is unlocked. The "access Control" information for the mail password entry says "Confirm before allowing access." In the window pane for "Always allow access by these applications", it has 7 entries for /Applications/Mail.
5) When I try to edit "Access Control" for the mail entry, I am unable to permanently save any change. If I change it to "always allow access to this item" or if I try to delete any of the redundant entries for /Applications/Mail and attempt to save changes, I am presented with a dialog box asking me for the keychain password. When I provide the keychain password, it apparently accepts it. However, if I exit the mail password entry and re-enter it, I see that the changes were not saved. All Access Control information is as it was originally.
This seems consistent with the fact that selecting "Always Allow" from the warning boxes (see item 2 above), the permanent change fails.
I have locked and unlocked the keychain. The password seems to work. I have downloaded Keychain First Aid and run it. No problems were found. I have trashed the preferences for the keychain (com.apple.keychainaccess.plist in the Preferences folder) and restarted the computer. This has not helped either.
What has gone wrong with my keychain that I am unable to effect/save any edits to the attributes of any of the passwords? How do I fix it so that I can effectively tell it to allow my Mail application to access its password?
I am running an unmodified Mac G5 on OS 10.2.8. For a year and a half, Mail has been able to log into my mail account without any action on my part. Two weeks ago that changed.
1) If I start the Mail application, 2 warning windows open saying that Mail wants permission to decrypt the mail password item from my keychain.
2) If I click "Always Allow" on either warning window, the access fails and I must manually type in the login information. Mail has been set up to save my password... this apparently does not stop Mail from attempting to get the password from the keychain.
3) If I click "Allow Once", on each window. Mail is allowed to access the keychain.
4) I have opened Keychain Access utility and examined the mail password entry. The keychain is unlocked. The "access Control" information for the mail password entry says "Confirm before allowing access." In the window pane for "Always allow access by these applications", it has 7 entries for /Applications/Mail.
5) When I try to edit "Access Control" for the mail entry, I am unable to permanently save any change. If I change it to "always allow access to this item" or if I try to delete any of the redundant entries for /Applications/Mail and attempt to save changes, I am presented with a dialog box asking me for the keychain password. When I provide the keychain password, it apparently accepts it. However, if I exit the mail password entry and re-enter it, I see that the changes were not saved. All Access Control information is as it was originally.
This seems consistent with the fact that selecting "Always Allow" from the warning boxes (see item 2 above), the permanent change fails.
I have locked and unlocked the keychain. The password seems to work. I have downloaded Keychain First Aid and run it. No problems were found. I have trashed the preferences for the keychain (com.apple.keychainaccess.plist in the Preferences folder) and restarted the computer. This has not helped either.
What has gone wrong with my keychain that I am unable to effect/save any edits to the attributes of any of the passwords? How do I fix it so that I can effectively tell it to allow my Mail application to access its password?