There's a ton of positivity here, but on the balance there are some significant issues with pass that I think bear mention: - The fact that it's essentially unstructured data makes it hard to work with generically. If you have a username + password and need to use those in a script, you'll need to implement your own parser in your shell language in every script you need it in. - `pass generate` to generate new passwo…
Pass: Unix Password Manager
111–120 of 186 posts
Re: Pass: Unix Password Manager
#112There's a ton of positivity here, but on the balance there are some significant issues with pass that I think bear mention: - The fact that it's essentially unstructured data makes it hard to work with generically. If you have a username + password and need to use those in a script, you'll need to implement your own parser in your shell language in every script you need it in. - `pass generate` to generate new passwo…
For the structure I "solved" that problem by creating folders with three main files: Websites/foo.com/username Websites/foo.com/password Websites/foo.com/email Sometimes I add "/notes" with unstructured text contents, and for a few special cases I created a file "/json" with some machine-readable things in JSON format. It's not perfect, and I do dislike the way that the metadata isn't encrypted, but on the whole I'm…
private/foo.com/foo-com-login
The first line of that file is password, the rest are optional notes. I think using first line for password and the rest for metadata was intended originally.
I love pass, but I agree that it would be nice to have an established standard of where to put username etc.
Re: Pass: Unix Password Manager
#113There's a ton of positivity here, but on the balance there are some significant issues with pass that I think bear mention: - The fact that it's essentially unstructured data makes it hard to work with generically. If you have a username + password and need to use those in a script, you'll need to implement your own parser in your shell language in every script you need it in. - `pass generate` to generate new passwo…
but this is not a shell script...
Re: Pass: Unix Password Manager
#114I recently moved away from pass after a decade or so. Two main reasons: 1. This laptop up was set up with flatpak versions of all GUI applications, including Firefox, and the browser plugin just doesn't work. I persisted with the work-around of `pass -c ` from the run command prompt for a while to paste into the browser, but its not ideal. 2. I realised that the Android app was archived. There's at least one fork, bu…
I'm in a similar situation and considering doing the same thing as you, for the same reasons, but I'm curious about how the offline experience is.
I'm often facing periods of bad to no connectivity, and I find the ability to lookup or even update a credential offline very useful. Not sure how much of it is possible with Vaulwarden and I couldn't find the time to try it yet.
Re: Pass: Unix Password Manager
#115I recently moved away from pass after a decade or so. Two main reasons: 1. This laptop up was set up with flatpak versions of all GUI applications, including Firefox, and the browser plugin just doesn't work. I persisted with the work-around of `pass -c ` from the run command prompt for a while to paste into the browser, but its not ideal. 2. I realised that the Android app was archived. There's at least one fork, bu…
Makes me wonder if something else was the issue, such as disagreeing over security practices or the like.
> I persisted with the work-around of `pass -c ` from the run command prompt for a while to paste into the browser, but its not ideal.
I actually do this on purpose. The last time I checked into the plugin, it looked like it unlocked your gpg key at Firefox launch rather than at password prompt time. Also, I didn't like the fact that the plugin creator could simply send my passwords to themselves without my knowledge. Firefox and pass are big/trusted enough to not do this. But some random guy? That was outside my risk tolerance.
Re: Pass: Unix Password Manager
#116This is interesting for CLI lovers, but I feel KeepassXC on desktop + KeepassDX on Android (with the password DB stored on my own machine and accessed remotely via Wireguard) is a better solution for normies.
keepass has a very underrated feature i never see much talk about where you can have multiple vaults and have them open and search both at the same time (or at least the two apps you mentioned support that anyway). most password managers are based around the idea of one single vault which creates the problem of having to treat every password like it needs the maximum amount of security. in my own case i would guess m…
Re: Pass: Unix Password Manager
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Memory isolation doesn't really help, though. If you have a malicious process running under the same user account as your password manager, it's still game over since that process could e.g. - capture keyboard input - capture your screen - silently install browser extensions to capture your credentials - modify your shell config, .desktop files, $PATH, … to have you e.g. call a backdoored version of your password man…
For modern operating systems capturing keyboard input is locked down to avoid keyloggers. Capturing your screen requires explicit user permission to do so, popping up a dialog. Apps are isolated so another app can't interfere and install a browser extention or modify shell configs, etc.
Re: Pass: Unix Password Manager
#118I recently moved away from pass after a decade or so. Two main reasons: 1. This laptop up was set up with flatpak versions of all GUI applications, including Firefox, and the browser plugin just doesn't work. I persisted with the work-around of `pass -c ` from the run command prompt for a while to paste into the browser, but its not ideal. 2. I realised that the Android app was archived. There's at least one fork, bu…
Ultimately I wanted something easier to sync between multiple devices. Now that I am traveling more seriously I can't get away with only having a few important passwords saved on my phone and laptop.
It was a lot easier to sync (1) file with KeePassXC and it has 2 well supported Android apps to choose from. It took me around 3 hours one day to manually move everything over, I took that as an opportunity to prune and refactor everything which is why I didn't use the CSV import feature.
Password managers for me are a "write occasionally, read frequently" app so it's pretty painless to shoot over 1 file over my local network to keep 3 devices in sync.
Re: Pass: Unix Password Manager
#119I recently moved away from pass after a decade or so. Two main reasons: 1. This laptop up was set up with flatpak versions of all GUI applications, including Firefox, and the browser plugin just doesn't work. I persisted with the work-around of `pass -c ` from the run command prompt for a while to paste into the browser, but its not ideal. 2. I realised that the Android app was archived. There's at least one fork, bu…
Re: Pass: Unix Password Manager
#120I love Jason Donenfeld’s work, but I don’t really see the point of pass compared to using an encrypted text file, the latter being far more ergonomic.
If encrypted file works for you, that's great! But thinks like syncing it across devices, accessing entries programmatically, a mobile app all require rolling something on your own - pass solves this for you (while still being very simple).