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Groups > comp.os.linux.misc > #27708

command line password manager

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I've had to use a number of different password managers during my
employment career. I dislike having to use a web browser or a special
GUI to access passwords, but I can understand why companies might
prefer such systems.

My method of choice for my personal stuff has been encrypted plain text
files for a long time now. I decrypt when needed and copy the values
of interest. My method works very well for my usual workflow of
memorizing commonly used usernames and passwords and also allowing me to
associate relevant things together. Eg: I have a work file with gmail,
github, and web forum accounts all tied to my work identity. My personal
github account has a seperate file. 

But recently I've been doing some work that requires me to enter
passwords over and over and it's made me think about how this could be
made more friendly to my workflow methods.

I'm envisioning a simple command line program that can just push the
password into the copy/paste buffer (actually "| xclip -i"). I could
write such a tool. I can see how Hashicorp's 'vault' would do a good
job providing the backend. But is there something already written for
this sort of use case?

Example vault version:

    $ cat getpw
    #!/bin/sh
    export VAULT_ADDR=http://127.0.0.1:8200
    vault kv get -field=value secret/"$1" | xclip -i
    exit $?

    $ cat setpw
    #!/bin/sh
    export VAULT_ADDR=http://127.0.0.1:8200
    printf "Enter password for $1: "
    read value
    vault kv put secret/"$1" "value=$value"
    exit $?

But immediately one can see flaws like no error handling, sanity checks,
or even setting the terminal to not echo back the password in the setter
program. (Access control to that would be governed by having the correct
VAULT_TOKEN environement variable set.)

So before I actually embark on this, what else is there? I do kinda see
this as a encrypted-in-RAM cache tool to supplement other password
stores so maybe nothing else exists and is better.

Elijah
------
vault is easy to set up...

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Thread

command line password manager Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2019-07-26 19:21 +0000
  Re: command line password manager Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-07-26 20:36 +0000
    Re: command line password manager Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2019-07-26 22:07 +0000
  Re: command line password manager John Forkosh <forkosh@panix.com> - 2019-07-27 01:44 +0000
    Re: command line password manager Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2019-07-27 06:11 +0000
      Re: command line password manager Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-07-27 15:18 +0000

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