pws

pws is a command-line password safe/manager written in Ruby using aes-256-cbc and pbkdf2.

Usage

Setup

You can install pws with: $ gem install pws

Run $ pws --help for usage information.

On Linux, please make sure you've got xclip or xsel installed (for the clipboard).

Hints

OpenSSL 1.0

You should use a Ruby that was built with bindings to an openssl version >= 1.0 or pws will fall back to a Ruby-only version of the PBKDF2 function, which is much slower. If using openssl 1.0 is not possible for you, you can work around that issue by using the --iterations option with a value below 75_000 (see help). If you have problems using openssl 1.0 with your Ruby, please look for a solution in this issue.

Updating from pws 0.9

The 0.9 password files are not compatible with the 1.0 version of pws, however, you can convert your safe with: $ pws resave --in 0.9 --out 1.0

How to use a .pws file in the current working directory

Besides using the --filename path/to/safe option, you can shortly call pws --cwd for using a .pws file in the current directory.

Reading the source

Trust the code by reading the source! It's originally based on this tutorial. You might want to start reading in the 0.9.2 tag, because it's got less features and therefore is less code.

Contributors

namelessjon
brianewing
dquimper
grapz
thecatwasnot (cucumber specs loosely based on these)

pws