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Recently my Firefox started to prompt me for the password manager's master password right after starting it which is quite annoying, and I can't find what's triggering it. This change in behavior seems to coincide with the update to 34.0, but I'm not sure. Firebug's network monitor shows no network activity, and it also happens when all add-ons are disabled.

My question (which might be an X-Y problem....) is: Is there a way to log/trace the access to the password manager in order to find out what's triggering it? (apart from building Firefox with debug symbols and then having a happy debug session.)

karel
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VolkerK
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3 Answers3

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There is the description on how to deal with tracing of password manager activities: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox:Password_Manager_Debugging and it really works.

Curious User
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    Please quote the essential parts of the answer from the reference link(s), as the answer can become invalid if the linked page(s) change. – DavidPostill Apr 13 '16 at 09:48
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Is that maybe firefox itself asking you to "decrypt" or "identify yourself" before it will reveal all your passwords? Maybe a new feature?

My about:config has this entry

security.ask_for_password

Integer

Determines when Mozilla Mail should ask for the master password.

0 (default): Only the first time it's needed

1: Every time it's needed

2: Every n minutes, where n is the value in security.password_lifetime.

Or could be a bug or incompatibility with an addon, lots of google results including this one: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/866291#answer-257775

Here's a quote from a bug report that supports the addon theory:

When you have a master password set, Firefox asks for it when you first load a tab with a login form that you've stored a password for (even if the tab is in the background) or when an extension (like Foxmarks) asks for a stored password.

To find that, try disabling addons one at a time & see when it stops. Or disable them all first and see if it stops, then enable one at a time.

Xen2050
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I had the same (indeed very annoying) problem with the version 34 update. The prompt (at startup) disappeared after I deactivated firefox Sync (you know, synchronization of bookmarks, etc).

My suggestion for a solution is: deactivate "Sync" (no automatic "Sign in to Sync") and only use it manually until this problem is fixed.

Robert
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