February – Controlling your passwords with pass

Pass is a nice Unix style free and open source wallet for keeping your passwords safe. Here is a brief look how to set it up in Linux.

Install the application in the terminal.
```
sudo apt install pass
```
Check for the existing GPG keys.
```
gpg --list-keys
```
If no keys were found generate a key pair.
```
gpg --generate-key
```
Copy the name of the key and initialize pass.
```
pass init ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV1234
```
where ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV1234 is the name of the key.
Generate a password with
```
pass generate keyfolder/newkey
```
List the passwords.
```
pass
```
Copy a password to the clipboard.
```
pass keyfolder/newkey -c
```
For more commands:
```
man pass
```

Connect Pass to Git and it is easy to keep track of passwords with multiple machines.

Export your public and private key to a file with

  gpg --export --output public.key ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV1234 
  gpg --export-secret-key --output private.key ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV1234

where ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV1234 is your key name.

Now we can initialize the git repository with these keys. Move public.key and private.key through a safe channel to a computer you wish to use Pass in. Import the keys to the machine.
```
gpg --import public.key
gpg --import private.key
```
After importing the keys to a new machine you can list the keys
```
gpg --list-keys
```
and initialize Pass with
```
pass init ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV1234
```
Initialize your git repository. Make a new repository named “pass-store” e.g. to GitHub if you are doing this the first time before the following commands. If the first command asks you to identify follow the given instructions.
```
pass git init 
pass git remote add origin git@repo.com:myname/pass-store
```

Get password data from the server (from a non-empty repository, otherwise skip)

pass git pull origin master --allow-unrelated-histories
pass git commit -am "firstcommit"

Do some changes and pass will automatically commit them. Push and set the “upstream”.
```
pass git push --set-upstream origin master
```
If Git complains about “divergent brances” just follow the instructions and repeat the command.
From here on you can use the familiar git commands.
```
pass git pull 
pass git push
```
It can be the case that you have to raise the trust level of the public key. For that, check this article.

Stay safe :)

References: