PasswordMaker Forums

Firefox/SeaMonkey/Mozilla/Netscape/Flock Browser Extension => Help and Support => Topic started by: trojanpony on October 17, 2007, 01:09:29 PM

Title: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: trojanpony on October 17, 2007, 01:09:29 PM
I've used PM for probably 2 years now with no problems whatsoever.  I recently added a new account and couldn't get it to populate the "username" or password fields.  I tried everything I could think of but nothing worked.  I lived with it for a while but decided I might have other issues so decided to uninstall and re-install PM.  I deleted (after saving) the the config/profile.rdf file in docs-setting/user/appdata/mozilla/firefox/profiles/xxx/pm.rdf and then uninstalled PM.

I closed firefox and reloaded to make sure everything was gone and it was.  I downloaded and installed PM.  Closed ff, reloaded and looked to make sure PM was empty.  It was empty: Everything looks good.  I set all my defaults and started to reload my "stuff".  I created a new group and then an account.  I let PM load the url directly from the site, entered my username and then compared the new PW to the old one (i'd printed off all my settings) and everything looks great.

I saved and closed PM, closed the site, reloaded the site clicked on my "key" and boom, a completely unknown password is loaded to the site form and NO username.  I've looked at the .rdf file and it looks fine.  I rechecked the password and usernames PM generates (where you can copy to clipboard) and it matches all of my correct info.  So, I try again (and again) and I still get the strange, unknown password loaded into the site form and NO username.  I also looked at the url in PM and in my .rdf file and it matched perfectly although I didn't think that could be a problem since PM shows me the correct password, it just loads a different one.  Also, when I right-click in a field a bring up the PM popup and tell it to populate this field, it does nothing for the username.

I've tried using the advanced auto-populate, letting PM identify the field thinking there's something in the html page that was keeping PM from recognizing it.  While PM does identify the field differently (PIN instead of "username" in this example), it still will NOT load the username.

As a side note, this is the same problem I was having when I tried to add the new account I first spoke of, before I did anything at all.

I'm at a loss and can now get nothing to work.  Where do I go from here?  What to do?  Please HELP!!
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: trojanpony on October 17, 2007, 03:09:33 PM
Well, I've determined that the "mystery" password being used it the password generated from the "default" account setting - in all cases.  Can't get it to do anything else or recognize/input a username at all.  I've uninstalled and re-installed 3 more times generating new .rdf files everytime, same results.  WHAT am I doing worng?
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: Eric H. Jung on October 17, 2007, 03:28:42 PM
Hi,

You said you saved the original passwordmaker.rdf file. Do the following:

Close Firefox.
Copy the original RDF over the new one.
Open Firefox.

You're old settings should be in effect. This doesn't solve the problem of the site not populating, but at least you'll have your settings back. To fix the problematic site, maybe you could share it's URL so I can take a look?
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: trojanpony on October 17, 2007, 05:08:34 PM
Thanks Eric, I've already done that, but now, with the new download and install, none of the usernames will populate.   I've tried several different sites, yahoo and google mail as well as chase.com.  I thought maybe I'd fixed the problem by copying the default account into the new group but that still only uses the default account info.  Oddly it doesn't even seem to recognize that there are multiple accounts (email accounts for yahoo) within the same group.  I'm thinking I've messed something up with the default account, but after 3 reinstalls I'm running out of things to check.  you can mail me directly if there is anything you'd like to look at from my system....just mail me at [email protected].  Thanks much.
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: Eric H. Jung on October 17, 2007, 05:43:40 PM
Hi,

When strange things like this happen to me, they are almost always resolved by creating a new firefox profile (http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile#new), and installing my extensions there. Try that, and copy the old passwordmaker.rdf to the new profile directory. Let me know if that fixes it.

Eric
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: tanstaafl on October 17, 2007, 08:21:12 PM
I thought maybe I'd fixed the problem by copying the default account into the new group but that still only uses the default account info.

You are NOT supposed to move the Defaults Account - Eric said that doing so can definitely cause problems...

Eric?
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: Eric H. Jung on October 17, 2007, 08:24:03 PM
I didn't catch that he'd moved the Default account. Bad. You're not supposed to be able to do that. Is that what you did? You'll have to manually move it out by editing the passwordmaker.rdf file.
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: tanstaafl on October 17, 2007, 08:29:15 PM
I thought maybe I'd fixed the problem by copying the default account into the new group but that still only uses the default account info.

Ooops - he said 'copying'... not sure why I read that as 'moving'... so I may have been wrong...
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: trojanpony on October 17, 2007, 11:37:55 PM
No, I didn't move the default account.  I also tried your suggestion, Eric, and created a new Firefox profile, installed PM there and created a new group, then an account and still the same thing.  Seems no matter what I do PM is always using the password from the default account (eventhough the correct one appears when I look at a particular account in PM) and will not populate the username field at all (whether one is in the default account or not).

I even copied my old .rdf file into the new profile and while all of my old passwords and usernames work flawlessly, I can't add any new ones...well, not with any success that is.

Do you think it could be something in FF itself that simply creating a new profile won't overcome?  I'd hate to have to uninstall it but I'd hate more having to find an alternative to PM.
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: Eric H. Jung on October 18, 2007, 01:31:21 AM
Do you think it could be something in FF itself that simply creating a new profile won't overcome?

No. Let me ask some questions:

1. Are you using coolkey or auto-populate? If coolkey, which method are you using (toolbar button, shortcut, context-menu)?
2. What URL patterns do you have defined for the new account?
3. Do you have "Autopopulate username & password fields for all sites" checked for the default account?
4. Do you have "Autopopulate username & password fields for sites that match this URL" checked for the new account that doesn't work?
5. After the password is populated incorrectly, what does the PasswordMaker ring icon in the statusbar say? It should be gold, but is it tilted 45 degrees? When you hover over the ring icon in the status bar, does the tooltip claim the default or custom account was used?

This really does sound like the problem being discussed here (http://forums.passwordmaker.org/index.php/topic,1415.0.html). Maybe AcidReflux can share what he did?
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: trojanpony on October 18, 2007, 01:30:19 PM
Let me see if I can address all of this:
1) For groups where I have multiple accounts using the same URL (gmail for example) I use the coolkey toolbar button which brings up a listing of all of the accounts in that group that share the URL.  Once I choose the one I want it autopopulates.  I DO NOT have the autopopulate function turned on for these accounts.
2) For the latest account I've attempted to add, which has a unique URL, BUT is in a group with other accounts there are NO URL patterns identified, it's simply "domain.com".  As a side note, I have tried to define patterns but this yields no different result (e.g. *doman.com).
3) The "Autopopulate username & password fields for all sites"  is NOT checked/selected in the default account.
4) I DO have the "Autopopulate username & password fields for sites that match this URL" for the new account.  However I have tried it both ways with the same results: nothing is auto-populated, coolkey or context menu gets me the default account password, nothing for username (but there's not on in the default account, when there is, it uses that one, the default, as well). 
5) Status bar shows the ring as gold, tooltip indicates the default was used.

If this were on a server I'd almost think that the permissions had been changed on the .rdf file, that's the way it acts..sort of.  Don't know if there's a similar pc r/w setting that's gotten fouled up.

I will review the thread now.

Thanks again, don't give up on me...there's nothing I can find that compares to PM!
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: trojanpony on October 18, 2007, 02:09:04 PM
The problem Acid was having might be similar but I don't think it's the same.  First of all, I can't get anything to auto-populate (anything being anything new).  I just tried adding a URL pattern, even though this is a unique (I'm sure of that) URL.  Still not auto-populate.  As far as I can tell, it makes no difference what I do, the default info is being used and nothing auto-populating (again, anything new).

Don't know if this is helpful or not, but in trying to isolate the problem I deleted an account that has been working flawlessly for months.  I re-added it, exactly as it had been before I deleted it and now it suffers the same symptoms as any other new account:  no auto-populate, coolkey or context uses default account info.

Another thing that might have some relevance:  I posted a month or so ago with a problem relating to multiple accounts showing up in coolkey when PM only showed one and I'm absolutely sure the URL was unique.  There was no real resolution to the issue but I did find 3 instances of the account in my .rdf file.  I deleted 2 of them (from the rdf file directly, and everything was fine).
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: Eric H. Jung on October 18, 2007, 03:11:15 PM
2) For the latest account I've attempted to add, which has a unique URL, BUT is in a group with other accounts there are NO URL patterns identified, it's simply "domain.com".  As a side note, I have tried to define patterns but this yields no different result (e.g. *doman.com).

This sounds like the problem. You need to define at least one pattern otherwise CoolKey will match the default account. Try a simple wildcard pattern like http://*.domain.com/* and make sure that identifies the custom account when using coolkey.

Thanks again, don't give up on me...there's nothing I can find that compares to PM!

Thank you. You haven't given up on PasswordMaker in all these years so I won't give up on you.

Assuming the suggestion I gave above doesn't work....dumb question: how many custom accounts do you have? Is it too many to ask you to manually enter them into a new firefox profile (i.e., starting from the default passwordmaker installation with the default passwordmaker.rdf file). I'm wondering if perhaps the RDF is corrupt in some manner. If you emailed it to me, I could check for corruption but of course I'd understand if you didn't want to do that. I could also replicate the problem to see if it's truly a bug.

edit:One more thing you could try is turning on javascript error reporting for chrome and seeing if you get any javascript errors in the javascript console when creating the new account and when activating coolkey (I suspect you won't since the default account is being uses successfully, but it's worth a try). if you want to try this, let me know and i'll post what you need to do.
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: trojanpony on October 18, 2007, 03:40:19 PM
Okay...I'm not sure what the problem was but I found a copy of my FF profile on my cruiser flash drive and copied it over, along with another old copy of my PM profile and it seems to be working.  I've added new accounts and all the auto populate functions are working and the correct passwords are being used....SO...not sure what the issue was but it looks like I'm back in business.  Heck, I even found a new shortcut for myself.  Thanks for looking into this...not sure there's much else to do at this point.  It's working!
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: Eric H. Jung on October 18, 2007, 05:19:22 PM
Okay...I'm not sure what the problem was but I found a copy of my FF profile on my cruiser flash drive and copied it over, along with another old copy of my PM profile and it seems to be working.  I've added new accounts and all the auto populate functions are working and the correct passwords are being used....SO...not sure what the issue was but it looks like I'm back in business.  Heck, I even found a new shortcut for myself.  Thanks for looking into this...not sure there's much else to do at this point.  It's working!

Glad to hear it. Just to put me at ease, can you tell me if the URL pattern you were using in the NEW custom account was somedomain.com or did it have wildcards? IIRC, unless you have wildcards in the pattern, it only matches the EXACT domain in the address bar... which is almost never what you want because somedomain.com -- even if you type it out that way -- usually ends up as http://somedomain.com/ (or similar) in the address bar.
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: tanstaafl on October 18, 2007, 05:57:38 PM
The problem Acid was having might be similar but I don't think it's the same.  First of all, I can't get anything to auto-populate (anything being anything new).  I just tried adding a URL pattern, even though this is a unique (I'm sure of that) URL.  Still not auto-populate.  As far as I can tell, it makes no difference what I do, the default info is being used and nothing auto-populating (again, anything new).

Dumb question...

You do know that this will happen if you try to 'use' PWM while you actually have it OPEN, right? I've had this happen to me before, where I have it open but minimized, and forget, then try to log in somewhere, and the MPW prompt comes up, but nothing gets populated...

Eric, would you classify that as a bug?

EDIT: oops, posted before seeing that there was a resolution...
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: trojanpony on October 18, 2007, 06:21:42 PM
Well, now I'm quite confused...not a problem...but confused.  Eric, I tried adding new accounts without any URL patterns at all (just "domain.com") and with patterns.  I know I tried at least one because I copied and pasted the pattern Acid noted in his reply.  None of that worked.  When I copied the new profiles over and added a new account I entered the pattern *domain.com*.  Out of curiosity I just used this forum as a sample for adding a new account (No, i did not have this forum in PM, for some reason).  When I entered it, I did not use any pattern and got just what I was getting before: default account password.  I tried again and used *passwordmaker.org* and it worked fine.  I don't think that was my problem before because I know for certain I tried some different patterns, using a pattern identical to accounts I already had working (like the one that worked, then I deleted it and re-added and it wouldn't work).  However, I'm not sure I'd know to use a pattern straight away.  BUT, I can certainly see how browser URLs would differ from the URL entered into PM, then not be recognized and thus force PM to rely on the default.  I'd think that would be an issue that came up over and over and over again though.  Anyway, thanks again...I've looked high and low and PM is tops...nothing comes close.  I'd be lost without it (I have 11 groups with well over 100 IDs & Passwords...quite a nightmare to keep up with!).
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: tanstaafl on October 18, 2007, 07:21:41 PM
When I entered it, I did not use any pattern and got just what I was getting before: default account password.  I tried again and used *passwordmaker.org* and it worked fine.  I don't think that was my problem before because I know for certain I tried some different patterns, using a pattern identical to accounts I already had working (like the one that worked, then I deleted it and re-added and it wouldn't work).  However, I'm not sure I'd know to use a pattern straight away.

It sounds definitely like you were making some kind of mistake on the patterns.

You do know that "*passwordmaker.org*" is very insecure, right? You should never use wildcards at the beginning of a pattern. For example, for this site, you should use something like:

http://forums.passwordmaker.org/*

You also may be interested in a Feature Request for a much simpler Default Security Model (http://forums.passwordmaker.org/index.php/topic,1359.0.html) that I created to address this very problem, although I don't think Eric has said he liked the idea or not - Eric, did I forget?
Title: Re: Unknown Passwords being generated
Post by: AcidReflux on October 30, 2007, 05:58:20 PM
I have noticed that using *://*.yahoo.com/* some times doesn't work.  I seem to have better success with http://*.yahoo.com/*  It could be my imagination though.