All out of a sudden my Chromium based browsers seem to have forgotten all their passwords and log-in cookies. Other stuff like history and favorites are still there. Firefox, on the other hand, is not affected by this problem.
I am not 100% sure, but I think this happened after the last system update a couple of days ago. I find it unlikely that something happened to those browsers at the same time so I guessed that it is related to a common dependancy. I found out that they all use KWallet to store their passwords. KWallet and KWalletmanager were applications that were upgraded during the last system update.
What I have tried so far to fix the problem:
restoring the profile folder of one browser from a backup
downgrading the KWallet packages affected by the system update
disabling and re-enabling the whole KWallet system
Unfortunately, none of those actions brought the passwords or log-in cookies back. The browsers are able to store new passwords or log-in cookies, but if possible I would like to bring back the ones I had before, be it with KWallet or without it.
Does anyone has an idea on what else I could try? Thanks in advance!
Not a direct answer to your problem, but there definitely is something not right with kwallet, as you can read in this still very recent thread below…
Yes that’s approximately the timeline for the problem I reported. So far I can’t offer any additional information other than what @Aragorn linked to in my thread on the subject.
Thanks for welcoming me to the forum and pointing me to that thread!
When launching from the CLI, I get the same warning message: Connecting to deprecated signal QDBusConnectionInterface::serviceOwnerChanged(QString,QString,QString)
However, the application loads fine for me, unchecking “Use Wallet for the Secret Service Interface” does not do anything for me and I don’t use 2FA either. It might still be a related issue, but something is different on my side it seems.
Potentially related - but did not happen on Manjaro:
I recently reinstalled Mint and moved all my personal stuff - including $HOME/.config/chromium
(which should be the profile with all the stored stuff in it)
But I could not access the previously stored credentials - the history and extensions and everything else where still there.
The browser version is a newer one than what created the profile - it worked with the version from a month ago.
Luckily I only had used Chromium for one specific site and the credentials where also stored in Firefox, where I could access them and thus circumvent the issue by adding them again to Chromium.
This does not work for me, unfortunately, because the browsers show no saved passwords and hence no option to export.
I did log-in to a new site after the incident and saved the password for it using one of the Chromium based browsers. Interestingly, the password menu is blank regardless and this only changes when I log out from that site and log in again using the saved password (so it did save the password). Only after using it it appears in the saved passwords menu and with it the export option. The csv file only contains that one password, though, and none of the 20+ passwords that were saved before in that browser.
@Nachlese Interesting. Do you use any other keyring or wallet application like gnome-keyring maybe?
That is indeed also how I interpret how it works. There is an entry in the kwalletmanager5 for “Chromium Safe Storage”, suggesting that the wallet is only used to unlock this Safe Storage, and not for the individual logins that chromium stores.
I have restored both all the files in ~/.local/share/kwalletd AND ~/.config/chromium/ (and the other Chromium based browsers’ profile folders) from a recent backup and that helped! Before doing that, I disabled KWallet service, rebooted and after restoring I enabled it again (and rebooted again). All passwords and log-in cookies seem to have been recovered, except one site (Google account) where for whatever reason it requires a new log-in. I think it’s safe to say now that something with the KWallet update broke it, fortunately I could restore pretty much everything thanks to the backup.
Thank you so much! I actually think this is the first time that I had to use backed up files since I started backing up my system 10+ years ago.
Google is weird in that regard. Their login credentials are stored in regular cookies. So if you tell your browser to delete all cookies but not the logins, your Google login will still be gone, and they will require you to log in again.
It’s the same across all Google sites and subsidiaries, like e.g. YouTube.
My system is slimmed down system - everything that is obsolete or not used by my workflow is thrown away.
You can safely remove kwallet5 package - it is the previous kcm plugin and is not needed.
I don’t use ksshaskpass - so I never installed it (not correct - I actually did install it a few days ago in connection with a topic on x11-ssh-askpass but removed it again)
