How do I restore a backup of my keyring (containing ssh key passprases, nautilus remote filesystem passwords and wifi passwords)?

Posted by con-f-use on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by con-f-use
Published on 2012-11-05T18:52:00Z Indexed on 2012/11/07 17:18 UTC
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Old keyring

I changed the disk on my laptop and installed Ubuntu on the new disk. Old disk had 12.04 upgraded to 12.10 on it. Now I want to copy my old keyring with WiFi passwords, ftp passwords for nautilus and ssh key passphrases. I have the whole data from the old disk available (is now a USB disk and I did not delete the old data yet or do anything with it - I could still put it in the laptop and boot from it like nothing happend).

The old methods of just copying ~/.gconf/... and ~/.gnome2/keyrings won't work. Did I miss something?

New empty keyring even after copying .gnome2


1. Edit: I figure one needs to copy files not located in the users home directory as well. I copied the whole old /home/confus (which is my home directory) to the fresh install to no effect. That whole copy is now reverted to the fresh install's home directory, so my /home/confus is as it was the after fresh install.


2. Edit: The folder /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections seems to be the place for WiFi passwords. Could be that /usr/share/keyrings is important as well for ssh keys - that's the only sensible thing that a search came up with:

find /usr/ -name "*keyring*

3. Edit: Still no ssh and ftp passwords from the keyring. What I did:

  • Convert old hard drive to usb drive
  • Put new drive in the laptop and installed fresh version of 12.10 there
  • Booted from old hdd via USB and copied its /etc/NetwrokManager/system-connections, ~/.gconf/ and ~/.gnome2/keyrings, ~/.ssh over to the new disk.
  • Confirmed that all keys on the old install work
  • Booted from new disk

Result: No passphrase for ssh keys, no ftp passwords in keyring. At least the WiFi passwords are migrated.


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