Mail keeps asking for password even though I checked "add password to ..."

Question

keychain"
This started happen a few days ago. Every few minutes when it checks my main mail account, the password box pops up. I searched on here, saw recommendation for running Keychain FirstAid. Ran it and it gave me this error message:
"Repair started
Checking keychain configuration for user (user ID=501)
Home directory is /Users/user
Checked login keychain
User differs on ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.plist, should be 501, owner is 0
Owner not corrected on ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.plist, reason: No such file or directory
Checked default keychain
Checked keychain search list
Checked contents of ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain
Checked contents of /Library/Keychains/FileVaultMaster.keychain
Warning: some problems were not fixed
Repair failed"
How do I fix this problem? l have several mailboxes for different accounts and I have seen this happen occassionally with them as well.

Answer 1

Of course you only had read access to that file. That’s precisely what I said and why I suggested to do File > Get Info (⌘I) on com.apple.security.plist, to fix that problem by changing the Owner in the Ownership & Permissions > Details section, which was wrong and the cause of the problem...
Anyway, the file should be re-created when needed, so I wouldn’t worry about that. Actually, opening Keychain Access and running Keychain First Aid again may cause the file to be re-created.
The thing is, do you still have the problem of Mail repeatedly asking for the password? If Keychain First Aid doesn’t report any problems now, you may try removing the password entry from the keychain and letting Mail create it again the next time it asks for it.
Note, however, that Mail often doesn’t correctly report what the problem really is. If Mail can connect to the server but cannot log into your mail account for some reason, it’ll ask for your password regardless of whether that’s really the problem or not. Don’t keep entering the password every time, because that’s not the problem (click Cancel instead, and take the account back online afterwards).
Some ISPs refuse connection attempts if they are too frequent, for example, or limit the number of simultaneous connections that are allowed from the same IP address, or there may be too many messages on the server and Mail times out before the server responds, or there might be a problem with the network, or there might be a problem with the server...
Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Network, choose Network Port Configurations from the Show popup menu, and make sure that the configuration used to connect to Internet appears at the top of the list. Try also turning OFF all the network port configurations except the one needed to connect to Internet and see whether that helps — if it doesn’t, turn ON again the ones you want enabled.
What’s the time interval chosen in Mail > Preferences > General > Check for New Mail? If it’s set to Every minute, try changing it to Every 5 minutes.
Try using a different method to connect to Internet, if possible, or connecting the computer to Internet as directly as possible, i.e. bypassing any routers that might be present, using an ethernet cable instead of wireless, etc., and see whether that makes a difference.
You may also want to check with the provider of this account in case they’ve made some changes recently that could have a bearing on this.