Access Prompt keeps asking for GMail password

Question

A pop up keeping appearing in Ubuntu (running 12.10), asking for the password to my gmail account. The icon has a silver shield, and it is labeled Access Prompt.

The actual window has an image of keys on a keyring, says “Authentication request” in bold, and “Please enter your password for the account, [gmail address]”. It keeps saying my passwords are incorrect... I'm not even sure which account it's talking about. What is going on?

Solution 1

Evgeni Leshtanski's answer clued me in to what was really happening. The question isn't, "How do I tell some random prompt what my password is?" but rather, "What is going on?"

In my case -- and this probably affects a lot of people -- the underlying culprit was Empathy. I don't use Empathy, so I don't want it to authenticate to Google Talk on my behalf. Now here's where it gets interesting. When I followed Evgeni's lead and ran Online Accounts (under System Settings), it was completely unpopulated. That's because it auto-populates when apps that hook in to Online Accounts update credentials. Since I never filled in that Access Prompt dialog box, this never happened and I had nothing to change.

The key action that's leading this behavior on startup is that Empathy defaults to "Automatically connect on startup" even if you don't actually use it. So run Empathy, go to Preferences, and under the General tab, uncheck "Automatically connect on startup".

In my particular case, I had to also stop Evolution from checking my Gmail account before this dialog box went away completely.

Solution 2

Try renaming the file

~/.config/goa-1.0/accounts.conf

It worked nicely for me. Thanks to this comment: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gcr/+bug/1044549/comments/14

Solution 3

Your "Password was incorrect" problem is because "GMail" identifies "Evolution" as a less secure app, so doesn't provide authentication to the app. You can change this feature if you want, https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps

But if you don't want to allow your email access to evolution, you can remove your gmail account in evolution by following these steps

1. Open Evolution
2. Edit
3. Preferences
4. Select your email account, then press "delete"

This should remove your email account from evolution and no more signing in troubles anymore.

Solution 4

If it's for a Google account with two factor authentication enabled, generate a one time "Application-specific password" for it at the Google account security tab

Solution 5

I ran into this issue because of Google's Two Factor authentication. If you want to stop receiving this prompt you need to generate an application specific password from Google.

For instructions on how to create the app specific password follow this bad boy below.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en

Once you've followed those instructions, grab the generated password, plug it into the prompt, and be bothered no more!

(This solution was used in 13.04)

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Comments

[zackgates]

It worked... temporarily. It came back. What's going on?

[mrcktz]

Thanks for your answer! Can you provide a more detailed explanation on how and where to set this password? With your help beginners could also benefit from your answer.

[gaurav gupta]

Here's Google's help page on the subject support.google.com/accounts/bin/…

[Peter Fine]

I've followed this step but it doesn't help - on logging in it gives me two serial authentication requests as described (although with a silver key rather than a shield). Any ideas what I could do, or tips as to how I could troubleshoot this myself?

[Soroosh129]

I don't even have empathy installed and the same thing happens to me.

[Alex Dueppen]

Empathy no longer seems to have the "Automatically connect on startup" option (I have version 3.12.9 on Ubuntu 15.04). What should I do now?