Am 09. Nov, 2023 schwätzte paulf@quillandmouse.com so:
moin moin Paul,
Folks:
I have a bash/GPG based password manager I wrote years ago, but I'd
like to use something more "accepted/popular". The problem I have with
the other password managers I've looked at is that you can store a very
limited amount of information for each "account". For example, for
one of my logins, I may have to store the answers to three security
questions, an account login, email address, the actual password, and
maybe the mobile phone number associated with the login. I also object
to my password information being stored online by some password manager
vendor.
Does anyone know of a password manager which will store a variety of
user-defined information for each login, and not store that information
on the internet (and which is free as in beer)?
In KeePass-based projects like KeePassXC you can store the usual title,
username, password, URL and notes in the main screen/tab.
In the advanced tab you can store further key/value pairs. This works well
for storing random strings for security questions and answers.
The responses can been starred out like password entries are. There isn't
a keyboard shortcut to copy them, but there is a menu drop down, so you
can get the values without having to open the entry.
There's also an option to add attachments.
I say KeePass-based because KeePass was the original project. KeePassX was
a port of the windows KeePass project to Linux and other platforms.
KeePassXC is a more active, community developed fork of KeePassX. I've
been using the latter two for many, many years.
Thanks to the developers and packagers for the projects!
All 3 are using KeePass file formats. There are other packages that
understand the formats. F-Droid has several if you're wanting some of your
passwords on your phone. Because it's a common format you have some choice
into which tool you want to use. There are also some command line options.
The biggest lack I've seen for host-your-own is that there isn't a secure
way to do partial sync between password files. For instance, I don't need
all my passwords on my phone, so would like to have phone.kdbx with just
the few I need, but be able to sync with my everything.kdbx file if
changes are made in one or the other.
KeePassXC FAQ on file formats.
https://keepassxc.org/docs/#faq-format
ciao,
der.hans
Paul