Password Manger is not saving password
I am running Thunderbird 60.7.2 on Mac High Sierra 10.13.6. Whenever I start Thunderbird I am prompted for "Authentication Required", user name and password. When I enter the correct user name and password my calendar entries show up. However, even after checking "Use Password Manager to remember this password", the password is not remembered and I have to enter it again the next time I start Thunderbird. I've verified that Config:signon.rememberSignons is True. Per a different thread I deleted <profileDir>/key4.db. The other file recommended to delete was logins.json but I do not have that file. After just now entering the password again, I checked Preferences > Security > Saved Passwords and the file is empty.
As an experiment, I copies the logins.json file from another Mac computer, set ownership properly and tried again. Preferences > Security > Saved Passwords still shows as empty and the contents of logins.json remains unchanged.
I am runinng Thunderbird on 2 other Mac computers, 3 Linux computers and 6 Windows 7 computer and none of the others have this problem.
How do I fix this?
Modified by Mark Foley
Chosen solution
If it was copied from Windows, deleting pkcs11.txt from the profile folder would resolve the passwords not being saved. It won't do any harm to try it, as it is automatically recreated when TB restarts.
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Did you copy the current profile on the Mac from another TB setup on a Windows computer?
Possibly. If so that was 7 months ago, so I don't recall. If so, is there some remedy?
Chosen Solution
If it was copied from Windows, deleting pkcs11.txt from the profile folder would resolve the passwords not being saved. It won't do any harm to try it, as it is automatically recreated when TB restarts.
That may have done it! I'll try a few more times over the next 24 hours to make sure, but this time, after deleting the pkcs11.txt file and reentering the credentials, it DID NOT ask for id/pw after restarting. Fingers crossed.
Modified by Mark Foley
OK, that seems to have done the trick. Brilliant! Thanks. I would have NEVER figured that out on my own. I hope this tip can help others. I'll save this for my future reference.
I'm having this problem on Windows 7. Where do I find pkcs11.txt?
emmryss said
I'm having this problem on Windows 7. Where do I find pkcs11.txt?
Select Help/Troubleshooting Information, click Open Folder to open the profile folder in Explorer, close TB, delete pkcs11.txt from the profile folder.
Here: \Users\userid\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\defaultProfile\pkcs11.txt
My issue was on Mac. Not sure if this works on WIndows.
Modified by Mark Foley
Tried deleting that file but still have the same problem.
emmryss said
Tried deleting that file but still have the same problem.
Can you give more details of your problem? The original question is to do with profiles copied between Linux and Windows. If your passwords aren't being saved, check if you have a password manager operating as part of a security program.
I had this problem, too and the solution with deleting the file pkcs11.txt solved the problem. But there arises a new problem: (I am just changing from W10 to Linux and at least for a while I want to use the same database from W10 as well as from Linux.)
within this file pkcs11.txt exists a line parameters=configdir='sql:... followed by the profile path, written in Windows or Linux notification.
So if I fix this problem with linux, I will have the same problem next time I use the database from windows. A solution would be to delete every time this file at startup. But this is not practical. Does there exist a solution that solves this problem. If not, it would be possible to delete this file starting TB automatically.
I don't know if this issue is fixed in new versions of TB, but I doubt it would involve deleting the pkcs11 file on every startup. The issue should probably be made more visible in articles about copying TB from one computer to another, but it's only necessary to delete the file when copying between Windows and Linux or OS X, an infrequent operation for most users.
I am running Debian 9 and am having this problem. It probably started a few months ago and I erroneously posted it as a bug in TB.
I've renamed the pkcs11.txt and it gets recreated on re-boot, but the problem is not solved. Every time I start TB, I am prompted for my ftp password for another machine where a calendar resides.
For a few months, the ftp password was in my TB 'saved passwords' even though it wasn't being used. I was prompted instead.
Recently, the ftp password disappeared from my 'saved passwords'.