
Ask HN: File-based password manager for Linux - rgppq112
There are many password managers out there that keep reinventing obscure UIs and obscure file formats. Can we instead just say that:<p>- A username:password entry with all extra fields (such the the site url), is stored as a 
text file, encrypted with AES.
- The filename is the short description of the creds and that filename is also encrypted.
- These files can be put into folders that denote groups.<p>If everything was decrypted, it would look like this:<p>&#x2F;passwords
  &#x2F;banks
    &#x2F;mybank1
      username:foobar
      password:qwerty
      url:foobar.com
    &#x2F;mybank2
      ...<p>However on the disk it&#x27;s stored in the encrypted form:<p>&#x2F;passwords
  &#x2F;21ef..990d
    2899..8827
  &#x2F;0012..2718
    7728..8291<p>On top of that we need some tool that lets you go to bash, cd to that folder, enter the password in a secure way and then it would let you use &quot;nano&quot; to open any of those text files.<p>$ cd ~&#x2F;pass
$ passtool
&gt; master password: qwerty
$ nano banks&#x2F;mybank1<p>The killer feature is that you can use &quot;rsync&quot; without decrypting anything: you can rsync creds between backup harddrives, usb sticks and so on. If you accidentally added a few creds here and there and not sure which copy is the most up to date - rsync will let you fix it and you won&#x27;t need to type that 100 chars master password.<p>What do you think?<p>P.S. HN&#x27;s formatting is just wow. Add &quot;white-space: pre-wrap&quot; to CSS, guys. It&#x27;s 2019.
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bkq
This sounds very similar to pass [1]. Are you looking for a password manager
that fills these needs, or looking to develop what you have described?

\- [1] [https://www.passwordstore.org/](https://www.passwordstore.org/)

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rgppq112
I'd rather use an existing tool.

