“Secure Storage” in Ganymede is forced paranoia

12 Comments Published July 17th, 2008 in Eclipse Tags: .

Typing password is tedious. The "remember my password" has been invented to avoid users to type the passwords. A nice day some genius invented the "password manager" and... guess what? It asks for a password!

The Secure Storage has been added in Eclipse Ganymede, it is compulsory, and this is why I really hate it. I tried to find out a way to disable it and having eclipse remembering my password as before, but no way. Now you have a password: if you want it or not, and you have to face it.

secure storage in eclipse

In firefox, the "master password" can be disabled. Having that possibility is not just luxury, and infact firefox always had this option.

the master password in firefox

Keeping the life easy to users should be a mission for software writers. Intrusive security is really boring, Windows Vista is an example:

Keep the life easy. Don't put a bodyguard behind the users if they don't require: it will be not welcome.

12 Responses to ““Secure Storage” in Ganymede is forced paranoia”

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1 tedman Jul 18th, 2008 at 19:29

actually you can get around most of it.

in your eclipse/eclipse.ini file just add 2 lines

—
-eclipse.password
/home/myuser/.eclipse/passwordfile.txt
—

then edit the passwordfile.txt and put a master password in there.

You may need to delete your .eclipse/org.eclipse.equinox.security directory.

Make sure you do all the above with eclipse stopped (or it’ll recreate everything upon exit of eclipse and it’ll be all wrong).

Start up eclipse again, and now you can use it like before, no more prompting for secure storeage passwords.
2 Matheus Aug 6th, 2008 at 16:10

That’s really a shame. I wonder who was the genius that thought about this paranoia security thing that can’t be disabled.
For the next release i’m waiting for a fingerprint security system…also impossible to disable, of course.
3 david Nov 23rd, 2008 at 17:07

You can uncheck the ‘master password provider’ in Window > Preferences > General > Security > Security Provider. Close eclipse and remove the security_handler file in your .eclipse/org.eclipse.equinox.security directory.

Open eclipse again and sync with cvs/svn and check the ‘remember password’ option. Type your password for the last time. Voila.
4 tedman Dec 1st, 2008 at 23:16

David, you comment doesn’t seem to work on my machine.

I assume you actually meant “… Security -> Secure Storage” then under “master password providers” uncheck “UI Prompt”.

I’ve tried this before, and I just tried it again with the latest version, although it doesn’t ask me for a “master password” it also doesn’t store your password and it’ll keep asking for your password every time you close eclipse and open it again.

Did you miss a step in the instructions?

Oh an additional comment on my previous work around, when adding those lines make sure it’s added in the eclipse arguments section, not the vm arguments section, i.e. put it before the -vmargs line
5 Prantor Jan 16th, 2009 at 17:10

This security paranoia is driving me nuts. I am ready to quit eclipse in favor of other alternatives. Don’t get in between me and my productivity with you paranoia. This is how some a perfectly good IDE becomes blot ware.
6 dire Feb 27th, 2009 at 07:42

Works for me if you (uncheck the UI Prompt – as above) and also delete the CVS [Default Secure Storage] entry under General –> Security –> Secure Storage –> Contents.

I did not need to delete the security_handler file (perhaps this does the same thing?).

Restarted eclipse, prompted for username/password for the last time – phew!

The ~/.eclipse/passwordfile.txt does not seem to be required.
7 PasswordMaster Jun 25th, 2009 at 20:02

None of above worked here, with ganymede or galileo! This is very anoying.
8 Baggio Jul 30th, 2009 at 14:48

It worked for me.

Make sure you go to General –> Security –> Secure Storage –> Contents and delete the Default Secure Storage.

Thank you, guys!
9 Jaco Vosloo Feb 16th, 2010 at 18:21

If I disable secure storage as described here I can no longer enter passwords for the proxy authentication!
If I find the “fokken poes” developer that designed this I would love to leave a token of my appreciation on their doorstep…
10 HeliosUpdate Jul 12th, 2010 at 10:12

Man, Helios is just out, and I cannot get this tweak to work.

How the hell can they leave this like this ?
Is there a place to leave “official” requests ?
11 Ben Vitale Jul 16th, 2010 at 16:38

I was not able to use this workaround either, but that’s because I’m on 64-bit windows. The master password provider for Windows is not supported on x64. The only alternative is accept the UI prompting, or not be able to save passwords into secure storage.

The Eclipse bug for this is https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=226482 if you want to express your support for this issue.
12 mike Jul 22nd, 2010 at 15:57

I just wasted two F*CKING hours trying solve this issue until I read Ben’s last comment that it’s currently not solvable under x64! All I want to do now is punch my fist into the face of the guy who had the idea for this forced secure storage! … May I? Please? It would relief me enough to forget about it!