colmena VS pass-import

- rpi nas

I also wipe my entire rootfs every boot with a zfs snapshot rollback[2] using the impermanence module[3] to keep specific stateful data one one of two datasets with regular snapshots: one is backed up with zfs send, the other is just for cache between reboots.

It took a little puzzling to get started, because I didn’t know about the impermanence module, so I built my own hacky solution. But I really love this setup. And the way I don’t have cruft to clean.

Also my backups are so much smaller now :’-)

[1]: https://colmena.cli.rs/

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.

There are 4 tools I'm taking into consideration right now, but every suggestion is welcome: 1. deploy-rs - I don't know anything about it, heard about it like a day or two ago 2. NixOps - the official one, I don't know what to think, but I have concerns about Flakes compatibility 3. morph - I understand this as "NixOps, but better", no more toughs. 4. colmena - seems to be pretty straightforward with quite nice docs

They shouldn't be, Colmena stringifies the keyFile values which is the same approach as NixOps uses to avoid this. Apparently I implemented that part myself, haha.

I myself use colmena's apply-local. Anyway, totally relate to the meme. Using the same tool to manage your servers and workstations, and reusing stuff between them is amazing.

> 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.