Keychain and Mac OS Lion upgrade issue

Question

After upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion, I am getting a pop-up sometimes:

 syncdefaultsd wants to use the "login" keychain

It prompts for keychain password. ps aux does not show any process called syncdefaultsd. Time Machine is turned off. iCloud is on. Which application does that process belong to? How can I get rid of the annoying pop-up?

Answer 1

syncdefaultsdis a system agent (launchd definition file is /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.syncdefaultsd.plist) and part of the private SyncedDefaults framework residing in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ in Lion version 10.7.2. As a private framework, it is not documented in the Lion SDK, but the fact a private framework of the same name exists in iOS 5 makes me surmise it is part of the iCloud synchronization infrastructure.

Your popup is either:

• the request for permission to access an iCloud item stored in your keychain; in that case, the dialog displayed in such situations offers the option to deny access, grant access and permanently grant access – that last option would be the one you need.
• a request for unlocking the keychain as a whole – that dialog only takes your password. This happens because your keychain is locked. To get rid of the dialog, you need to disable both keychain locking on sleep and locking after idle time in the Keychain Access app.