password and keys

[Petter Adsen]

On Wed, 21 Oct 2015 08:37:52 +0200
"Gary J. Kirkpatrick" <garyartista at gmail.com> wrote:

> I added a password to Passwords and Keys.  I can unlock the "Login" but
> Gnome is another matter.  This wasn't an issue before I added a password to
> password and keys so no one who got into my computer could see all the
> stored passwords.
>
> I encrypted my files at installation.  I have the key for that but it does
> not work on Gnome key storage under Certificates.  I thought perhaps I
> confused an O for a 0 but that did not make any difference.

The ecryptfs passphrase for your home directory is only needed if you
for example need to take the disk out and mount + unlock it in another
machine.

> Is the encrypt password the one to use at Gnome key storage under
> Certificates?

I wouldn't think so. Have you tried with your login password?

> There are '"key servers" under Preferences. So I selected to publish and
> automatically receive keys.  So far nothing has changed.  I am not sure
> what this feature does.  It does not make sense from a security point of
> view to allow someone to retrieve the key so easily.

This is used to send and receive public PGP/GPG keys. If you create one,
you can use this to sync the public key to the key servers. Public keys
are meant to be shared, it is the private key and passphrase you need to
keep secret.

If you are looking for software to manage keys and passwords, I would
recommend Keepassx (or Keepass 2) over Seahorse ("Passwords and keys").
There is also compatible software on other platforms, like Android, iOS
and Windows, so you can use the same database everywhere. It isn't
integrated into the desktop in the same way that Seahorse is, but it's
quite good if you need access to your passwords on several devices.

Petter

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