agenix VS pass-import

How about: https://github.com/ryantm/agenix

I've heard good things about and seen sops-nix used on a few really solid configs. Others tend to use Age or Homeage.

I don't have a write-up, just my code in git. But it's not public. I'm not using anything out of the ordinary - Nix containers, modules, and functions, and the Agenix module with uses a private key to decrypt secrets at start. The Nix language is inherently composable. Here are some links that explain:

Containers:

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_Containers

Modules:

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_modules

Functions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/zzstun/please_help_m...

Agenix:

https://github.com/ryantm/agenix

For passwords I am using agenix which is also pretty awesome, an alternative could have been sops.nix.

Alternatively, you could simply add the wireless connection files to the Networkmanager dir in /etc using environment.etc. Though keep in mind that any file declared in your config is readable by any user in your system. agenix would be the solution to that.

One think I saw that I don't recommend is to change your password after installing; that's not very reporoducible, use users.users..hashedPassword or users.users..passwordFile with agenix or sops-nix.

Answering your broader question (secret management) colmena does that for me outside the Nix store. I also use git-crypt to store secrets in the repo. There are also more Nix-y alternatives like agenix.

I feel that trying to make SSH keys short-lived is becoming more painful each year because there's an increase of tools that use SSH keys for purposes other than SSH logins. For example, age [1] encrypts files with SSH keys, agenix [2] does secrets management with it, Git can now sign commits with it [3], and even ssh-keygen can now sign arbitrary data [4]. All of these become useless the moment you start using short-lived keys.

[1]: https://github.com/FiloSottile/age

[2]: https://github.com/ryantm/agenix

[3]: https://calebhearth.com/sign-git-with-ssh

[4]: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ssh-keygen.1.html

I built this because I try to keep as much as possible outside of my system config but all of the secret managers I found were system only. I had no idea how to solve this until I found RaitoBezarius' awesome pull request to agenix where it all clicked. It also exposed me to the inner workings of home-manager which has definitely made me appreciate it more! I kept this separate from agenix because I am interested only in a module rather than a CLI and thus see it as having a different fit.

I've been thinking about the same thing. I haven't gotten around to it yet but agenix looked the most promising to me so far

> I always tell these people to just sign up for a password manager and they always resist and say no. I must be missing something obvious.

Maybe they don't want to be relying on a random third-party for all their passwords?

Rather than getting them to sign up for a password manager, what about getting them to install a password manager? I use https://www.passwordstore.org/ - it encrypts your passwords with GPG, and shares the storage via a Git repository for synchronisation between different machines.

That way you can delegate the password handling to another program, e.g. a password manager like pass(1) (https://www.passwordstore.org/) or some interactive graphical prompt.

I want to move to something compatible with https://www.passwordstore.org/ - an open standard for keeping your passwords in a folder encrypted with OpenPGP.

The problem is that I'm nervous to give an unknown Android app and browser plugin total control of my passwords and access to my github account when I don't have time to review it's code properly. I have a bit more trust ing the command line tools, but I'd like to be sure that more people are looking at the code before I trust my life to it.

> Create a system or pattern based on url or brand and mentally hash it into a password.

Doesn't sound very secure. Also when you realize that you anyway have to trust cryptography, I believe it starts making a lot of sense to have an actual cryptographic key and encrypt it with one good random password you learn by heart.

I use pass https://www.passwordstore.org/, which encrypts my passwords with my GPG key, which comes from my Yubikey, which I unlock with a password. That means that I only need to remember one password, and it feels a lot more secure than your pattern based on url or brand.

i use pass and keep my database on a local git repo. it encrypts your passwords with gpg and is a really simple command line program

If you want portability and simplicity, there's a project called simply pass that uses standard *nix utilities (and git, I believe) to manage passwords from CLI.

0. Pass is just text files encrypted with gpg. I needed just one password on one work computer, where I had my gpg key, but not all my passwords. Decrypted the file and that was it.

1. There are plugins and web clients: https://www.passwordstore.org/#extensions

I've been incredibly happy with https://www.passwordstore.org/ for years. The data store is a file hierarchy, with the files themselves encrypted with GPG. Sync is via git. TOTP support with a plugin.