blog/content/software/pass.md

Title	Date	Modified	Author	Category	Tags	Slug	Header_Cover	Summary	Lang
Manage your passwords with pass	2019-04-22 19:00	2024-02-24 18:00	Fabrice	software	pass, git, cli	password-store	images/covers/clovers.jpg	A simple password manager that relies on gpg, and synchronized with git.	en

As security breaches are discovered regularly, and so leakage happens, it is recommended to have a different password on each account. However, this task is obviously a pain to maintain by hand. I did use a notebook back in 2003, which I lost within a month, given that I'm a very organized person.

Hopefully, many password managers exist, with similar features: cross-platform (especially smartphone support), password generation, browser integration…

I'm not here to compare them, if you want to give a look, Wikipedia provides a nice comparison table there.

However, thanks to moviuro, my choice is pass along with pass-otp (and passmenu). I don't intend either to make a comprehensive guide, as those already populate the internet, for example here.

To make it short, pass is a bash scripts using git, gpg written by zx2c4.

Here are just some commands I often use.

pass generate -i <pass-name>

To regenerate a password, the -i is important to avoid overwriting the whole file and having to rely on dirty git to withdraw your mistake (pass <cmd> will automatically commit your change)… I sometimes forget it, so let's put it here as a reminder.

Sometimes it can be useful to specify the accepted special chars, this can be done using the PASSWORD_STORE_CHARACTER_SET environment variable. This value is interpreted by the tr command, hence to create a PIN, you can use the following value: PASSWORD_STORE_CHARACTER_SET='[:digit:]', then specify the length with the last argument.

For instance, to generate a 6 digit PIN:

PASSWORD_STORE_CHARACTER_SET='[:digit:]' pass generate <pass-name> 6

I didn’t manage to specify how to have at least one of them, so I run the command multiple times (with the -i option to change the file in place after the first one)… It pollutes a bit the git history but, well… it works.

For instance, for a service supporting only the following characters: -_@$<> of at most 20 char long (fictive example), you can use the following command:

PASSWORD_STORE_CHARACTER_SET='[:alnum:]-_@$<>' pass generate <pass-name> 20

To finish:

pass git <whatever you want>

To do whatever you want with git, especially dirty git 😉

And finally, I'm using password-store on my android phone.