On Fri, 04 Jun 2021 09:38:03 +0100, Terry Coles wrote:
> Anyone else noticed this? I upgraded to Kubuntu 21.04 a few days
> ago and now Chromium doesn't store passwords. The offer is made,
> and clcking OK is accepted, but opening 'Settings - Passwords'
> shows that no passwords have been stored.
> Anyone got any ideas?
It looks like Chromium stores passwords in its own configuration
directory, encrypted using a key that's stored in a supported OS-
specific keyring/wallet, such as KWallet. It does not appear to store
the passwords directly in KWallet any more.
I'm pretty sure Chromium used to store passwords directly in KWallet.
I don't know when that changed, but it could easily have been years
ago for all I know. I guess they decided not to delete the passwords
that were already stored there.
I don't really use Chromium, but I just tested saving a password and,
sure enough, it did not appear in KWalletManager, but it did appear in
Chromium's Settings and persists after restarting the browser. This is
in Chromium 90.0.4430.72.
In my case, I found the plain-text URL and username for the saved
login stored in:
~/.config/chromium/Profile 4/Login Data
Which is a SQLite database.* I'm not sure why I'm on "Profile 4". (I
think the default is "Default".)
On recent Ubuntus, I think Chromium is a 'Snap', so that might mean
the profile is stored somewhere else on those.
The password field in the Login Data database contains encrypted data,
which presumably gets decrypted using the key Chromium has stored in
my KWallet under "Chromium Keys", though I haven't bothered to test
this.
I'm not sure if any of that is at all useful to know, or whether it
helps with trying to unpick what the problem might be. But it does
mean that your Chromium profile in ~/.config/chromium goes hand-in-
hand with a key from your KWallet, and vice-versa.
It looks like someone had almost the same problem as you, but in
Chrome on Mac OS rather than Chromium on Linux, and solved it by
removing the Login Data file from their Chrome profile:
http://plasmasturm.org/log/chromepwstore/
* You can read SQLite database files using the GUI program
sqlitebrowser. (Which is a tool that always makes me feel a little bit
nervous, because if you accidentally edit the data, the changes will
immediately be written straight to disk with no opportunity to "undo"
and no way to "close without saving"!)
Patrick
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