Arch Linux

Master One

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-01-21

Posts: 249

Empty personal certificates shown in Gnome Seahorse / Default Trust

On a fresh installation of Arch Linux with Gnome, Seahorse shows 7 empty personal certificates under Certificate >> Default Trust which can not be manipulated or deleted from the GUI:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/L5H1K.png

Where are these coming from? What is their purpose? Where are they located in the file system? Can they be deleted?

Trying to search for this issue didn't revealed much, only that this seems to be specific to Arch Linux and that it has been mentioned on one occasion without resolution.

moderator edit -- replaced oversized image with link.
Pasting pictures and code

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2019-10-06 13:28:20)

WSDMatty

Member

Registered: 2019-08-27

Posts: 22

Re: Empty personal certificates shown in Gnome Seahorse / Default Trust

The link you posted does have an answer attached to it.

https://superuser.com/a/1305885

That seems like a likely 'solution' to me.

This forum post has a couple of locations you could look to find these certificates.

I would recommend NOT messing with these certs, unless you properly discover what they're for. If you have a fresh install of Arch, Gnome, and Seahorse, and they were there before you did literally anything else on the system, I would say they're there for a reason. Find out that reason and make sure that deleting them won't brick your system before you go fiddling with them. Or, conversely... Delete them. And let us know what breaks

Master One

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-01-21

Posts: 249

Re: Empty personal certificates shown in Gnome Seahorse / Default Trust

The link you posted does have an answer attached to it. https://superuser.com/a/1305885 That seems like a likely 'solution' to me.

No, that answer talks about anonymous certificates, but the shown 7 personal certificates are completely empty. When double clicking on any of them, it opens an empty window. In that window the delete button is grayed out and the only option is "Export". When trying to export, it just creates an empty file (with file-size zero).

This forum post has a couple of locations you could look to find these certificates.

That discussion is from 2015 and talks about a Gnome2 Key Storage for which the OP didn't have a password, which has nothing to do with this "Default Trust".

Some more digging revealed that System Trust and Default Trust usually contain the system certificates, but that does not explain the 7 empty personal certificates and why these are not present in other distributions.

I would recommend NOT messing with these certs, unless you properly discover what they're for. If you have a fresh install of Arch, Gnome, and Seahorse, and they were there before you did literally anything else on the system, I would say they're there for a reason. Find out that reason and make sure that deleting them won't brick your system before you go fiddling with them. Or, conversely... Delete them. And let us know what breaks

I'm not brave enough to mess around with such unknown things, and I can't delete them because I don't know where they are coming from, which is why I was hoping that someone else has some more insight.

jorchube

Member

Registered: 2009-04-05

Posts: 57

Re: Empty personal certificates shown in Gnome Seahorse / Default Trust

On a fresh installation of Arch Linux with Gnome, Seahorse shows 7 empty personal certificates under Certificate >> Default Trust which can not be manipulated or deleted from the GUI:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/L5H1K.png

Where are these coming from? What is their purpose? Where are they located in the file system? Can they be deleted?

Trying to search for this issue didn't revealed much, only that this seems to be specific to Arch Linux and that it has been mentioned on one occasion without resolution.

moderator edit -- replaced oversized image with link.
Pasting pictures and code

Hi. This happens to me in Fedora Workstation 31. I've opened an issue in Seahorse's gitlab, in case you are interested or can contribute with something:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/seahorse/issues/251

Master One

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-01-21

Posts: 249

Re: Empty personal certificates shown in Gnome Seahorse / Default Trust

Hi. This happens to me in Fedora Workstation 31. I've opened an issue in Seahorse's gitlab, in case you are interested or can contribute with something: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/seahorse/issues/251

Good to know that I'm not the only one wondering about this. There is nothing else to contribute, so lets see if someone has more insight.