Cleaning your Keyring

The Ubuntu Gnome KDE desktop environment used in the ANU Research School of Computer Science labs has a problem if svn passwords are used with the default stored keys. To enable you to use svn you must first clean out your keyrings. Here's how.

0. when do you need this fix?

you know you have a problem when an svn command that tries to access the svn server gives an error message that prompts you for a keyring password for '(null)'. These are commands such as svn update, svn ls, svn commit, for example

  % svn ls https://svn.anu.edu.au/SWConstr/lab1/branches/uNNNNNNNN --username uNNNNNNNN

You need to remove your old gnome keyrings to fix this.

1. cleaning up

In a terminal window remove all of the files in your own directory ~/.gnome2/keyrings, using the command

  % rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/*

2. starting again

Log out of your gnome session, and log back in.

From your gnome Applications menu choose Accessories then Passwords and Encryption Keys. There should be a key there called login. Right click on it and set it to be your default key.

Once you have done this you can do svn commands again and now they work

  % svn ls https://svn.anu.edu.au/SWConstr/lab1/branches/uNNNNNNNN --username uNNNNNNNN

This should now run, asking you for your password to log in to svn, this will be stored encrypted in your own gnome2 keyrings directory. The keys are decypted when you log in and thus available during your gnome session, but are securely stored encrypted between sessions.

Author: Chris Johnson with Steve Hanley, College of Engineering and Computer Science, ANU, 2011