Live data from Hacker News

Pass: The standard Unix password manager

passwordstore.org

181–190 of 213 posts

Re: Pass: The standard Unix password manager

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people mean by leaking metadata is if you sync over git or dropbox you also leak the metadata to them. Whereas with 1password or something like it the sync server only sees an opaque blob.

I use a private git repo that I own on a machine I configured. Does that mitigate it

That means only anyone with access to your laptop can know where you have accounts. Also make sure you're aware of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26801155

Re: Pass: The standard Unix password manager

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I usually use the -c option to copy/paste my passwords In X11 it's also possible to get passwords typed automatically with xdotool, which I call through an xmonad package. The only thing I'm missing is more powerful autocompletion.

Are you aware of passmenu, which is part of pass? The autocompletion/selection process works quite well for me

I wasn't, thanks! It's very nice to be able to type part of the domain name first and then space and then part of the username.

... but as far as I can see, passmenu just copies to clipboard and doesn't use xdotool?

Re: Pass: The standard Unix password manager

#183

I've been using pass for several years now and I recommend it to my friends, but I usually get weird looks when I say I store my passwords in a git repo (it's not as bad as it sounds!). Here's why: - I host my git repo on my desktop computer (through SSH), so it's not exposed anywhere except if you have SSH access to my computer. (A lot of people seem to think git = GitHub which is not true). So if your git repo is n…

I'm glad it's working well for you. I used to use pass, but when I lost my gpg key I was able to recover most of my passwords through a mistake I'd made. After that I decided to switch to something where I wouldn't be able to screw up as easily, and bought 1password. I still had an earlier gpg key, and had not reset all my passwords when I switched keys. I'd just re-encrypted them. This let me check out an old commit…

This is why I use pass without git. pass works normally without git, but the Android app assumes the store is a repository, so it "mostly" works.

Re: Pass: The standard Unix password manager

#184

I've been using pass for several years now and I recommend it to my friends, but I usually get weird looks when I say I store my passwords in a git repo (it's not as bad as it sounds!). Here's why: - I host my git repo on my desktop computer (through SSH), so it's not exposed anywhere except if you have SSH access to my computer. (A lot of people seem to think git = GitHub which is not true). So if your git repo is n…

It's worth mentioning though that your repo could leak metadata about what accounts you have, and your username, depending on how you name your pass entries (ie. you can mitigate it by adopting a more cryptic naming scheme for sensitive entries). Just something to be aware of, it may not matter for your use case. Bitbucket still offers free private repos, which I use for my password store.

I use Keybase git for this reason, and it works great.

Re: Pass: The standard Unix password manager

#186
post #117

Who decided that this is somehow a standard?

It's an amusing reference to the cheeky line from the historic Unix man page for `ed`; "the standard Unix editor". RE: who decided.. well, the presence of `ed` was a requirement for an OS to be accredited as POSIX-compatible, so that's presumably why `ed` decided to describe itself as 'the standard'. But `ed` fell so far out of favor once screen-based editors (`vim`, `emacs`, etc) became commonly available that the "…

Except ed is part of POSIX, so it has every right to that assertion on the man page.

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/e...

Re: Pass: The standard Unix password manager

#188

I love the idea of Pass, but from what I've seen of the UX (not talking looks) it doesn't really compare to the ease of use of products like 1Password (which I suspect was the catalyst for this being reposted). Does anyone have any contrary experiences when shared across iOS, Linux, and macOS devices + browsers?

My almost 70 years old dad uses Pass for iOS in his everyday life. He does not have a clue about what's going on under the hood (gpg, git, my instance of gitea where it pushes to, me being able to intervene or fix stuff from somewhere else than his phone, etc.), but thats fine for both of us. He even complained, when I suggested to try Nextcloud Passwords because he might understand better what's going on there. So I guess in terms of UX this is a positive example.

Re: Pass: The standard Unix password manager

#190
I've been using this with a modified version of the example passmenu script, enhanced with:

* ability to store/retrieve additional YAML metadata like username, e-mail, etc.

* pre-selection of entries by looking at URL and focused form field (this needs the add-url-to-window-title browser extension)

So in most cases I press a keybinding which invokes passmenu, and then just press enter as the correct entry and field (password/username) is already selected. Quite handy.

Source here if anyone's interested: https://github.com/liskin/dotfiles/blob/home/bin/passmenu and https://github.com/liskin/dotfiles/blob/home/bin/.passlib

Post reply on HN