1:42 AM
By default, Pidgin saves all your passwords in plain text (look under
~/.purple/accounts.xml). About four years ago there was a
bug report that asked to encrypt the passwords, but the developers marked the bug as "wontfix". Update: you can read about the reasons behind this,
here.
Here's where Pidgin Gnome Keyring plugin comes in: this plugin will make Pidgin store your passwords in the Gnome Keyring. One note though: the plugin will not prevent other plugins from writing passwords in the accounts.xml file (I don't use any such plugins so I can't give you an example).
Installation
1. For Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, use the commands below:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pidgin-gnome-keyring/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pidgin-gnome-keyring
For other Ubuntu versions (
you need Pidgin 2.7.x or newer!), you can download the Pidgin Gnome Keyring .deb:
2. Once the plugin has been installed, open Pidgin (if it was running, restart it) and enable the "Gnome Keyring" plugin under Tools > Plugins and then restart Pidgin:
Important note: sometimes the passwords are still saved in plain text the first time you start Pidgin (after enabling the plugin) - if this happens, restart Pidgin. To see if the Pidgin Gnome Keyring plugin is actually working you can look under ~/.purple/accounts.xml and see if your passwords still show up in plain text - they shouldn't. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future.
If you're not using Ubuntu, you can get Pidgin Gnome Keyring plugin via Google Code.
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6:03 PM
(Firefox passwords saved in GNOME Keyring)
A bug requesting Firefox Password Manager integration with the GNOME Keyring was submitted back in 2005 and unfortunately it still hasn't been fixed.
Since it doesn't look like this is going to be fixed anytime soon, a Firefox extension has been created which allows storing the passwords in GNOME Keyring.
But unfortunately there are a few issues with Firefox GNOME Keyring extension:
- password sync doesn't work properly
- there's no way to migrate your old passwords so once you start using the extension, you'll have to re-enter the passwords and save them again. Also, the old passwords remain untouched so if you don't want them to be available in the Firefox Password Manager you must manually remove them before installing the extension
- if you set a master password, when you click on preferences > security > saved passwords > show passwords you still get asked for it, even if GNOME Keyring is active
GNOME Keyring extension was recently updated and works with Firefox 3.6.x, 4.0 and 5.0 as well as Thunderbird (I've only tested it with Thunderbird 5.0 but it probably works with older versions too).
To install the GNOME Keyring extension in Firefox or Thunderbird, download it (.xpi link below) to your computer, then open the Firefox / Thunderbird Add-ons Manager and simply drag'n'drop the .xpi file to it and you should be prompted to install the addon.
After you restart Firefox, you should be asked to enter a password for the new Mozilla keyring (if you've set Firefox to remember your passwords) - enter your computer login password or else you'll probably be prompted to enter a password when you start Firefox.
Download Firefox GNOME Keyring extension (.xpi) |
Github homepage / source files
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