Password Manager for Kubuntu and Android

[Xplorer4x4]

I am familiar with KeePass2 but the linux version does not seem as stable as it's windows counter part sadly. I have to admit I have not tried the latest version as I added a ppa for keepass2 previously but just realized the maintainer is,well, not maintaining the ppa. Regardless, I was wondering if any one knows of an equivalent to KeePass2 that also has an Android counter part like KeePass2 has KeePassDroid?

Sent from my DROID2 Global

[lanzen]

AFAIK android can only read and not write v. 2 so far.

Keepassx works fine both ways if you don't mind downgrading.

[Xplorer4x4]

AFAIK android can only read and not write v. 2 so far.

Keepassx works fine both ways if you don't mind downgrading.

You might be right but I only need read support anyways on my android.

[SteveRiley]

Perhaps LastPass would meet your requirements.

[Xplorer4x4]

Perhaps LastPass would meet your requirements.

I use last pass on a personal level in firefox on my desktop but it costs money for android and doesn't quite achieve what I want anyways. I don't need it for a browser, I just need something I can obtain the password and copy it to the clipboard if I were to use ssh on my phone.

Perhaps more insight is needed. I am a co-webmaster. I mainly handy the linux side of the server. While I am no expert I generally can get by for the sake of the few things we need to run the server like apache, mysql, php perl and a few other things. My friend handles more of the programing with in the code base of the site. He is capable of handling the linux side to an extent as well. For security reasons, we use impossible to remember password usually 20 characters in length and simply a random string of letters,numbers and symbols. Anyways, as a windows user I used a keepass2 database. The db was password protected, and encrypted with a security key. I kept the security key on my PC, of course, and my android. It never entered my Wuala(encrypted) folder(never stored in the cloud). However, the database files remained in my Wuala folder in case I accidentally deleted it from my phone. Now should something crash on the server, or whatever the case, any staff member could email me, and with push notifications, I am alerted to the site going down with in minutes of being alerted. From my phone, I could open KeePassDroid, and easily copy needed password to the clipboard. Then using an app named Telnet(offers ssh, and my Android is a Droid2Global, the slide out qwerty keyboard would not play nice with certain symbols when using other ssh apps), I can access the server and poke around and see what happened. If it is something simple like apache(maybe we switched to lighthttpd or nginx, I forget) I can easily restart http over ssh from my phone, and the site is back up.

So Wuala, with Keepass2 was perfect, but in my experience, it was not nearly as stable as it's windows counterpart and would crash over the simplest of things. I see a new version of keepass was released earlier this month, but I like to avoid building from source as I am still paranoid over the system freeze issue from my last install.

[SteveRiley]

I wonder whether there might be a way to do your SSH-ing with key files instead of passwords. That would largely depend on whether the Android SSH client knows how to authenticate using a private key. If so, then the steps rougly would be:

1. Create the public/private key on your PC
2. Copy public key to destination server's .ssh subdirectory
3. Copy the private key to your Android (where?)
4. Tell the SSH client to use the private key (how?)

I might have to experiment with this myself...

[Xplorer4x4]

I forgot about the key file authentication. The server is running Debian Stable, but I tried setting up key files for ssh on my desktop to the server, and for some reason it didn;t work. I tried over and over and no luck. No idea why. As for keys in Android, the particular program I use, that's a negative on key files. I can only imagine some of the available SSH apps do offer it, but again, the problem is finding one that plays nice with a hardware keyboard rather then virtual keyboard. Others have reported similar problems on this model android phone, and I loathe virtual keyboards. Hints why I got a droid with a hardware keyboard even though it has a locked bootloader and is a bit under powered by todays standards.

[SteveRiley]

Hm, here's what I did to get key-based SSH from my laptop #1 to my server (mini2140.rileyz.local):

$ mkdir ~/.ssh
$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
$ ssh-copy-id root@mini2140

The ssh-keygen command creates two files: ~/.ssh/id_rsa is the private key, ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub is the public key. The ssh-copy-id command uses SCP to copy the public key into the server's /home/root/.ssh/authorized_keys file.

I copied the private file key to the .ssh folder on laptop #2 and it works fine.

Now on my G2 phone, I'm not having success. When I run ssh in the terminal window, it shows that -i is a valid parameter. However, when I try to run ssh -i /path/to/id_rsa root@mini2140, it complains with an "Exited: String too long" error.

[SteveRiley]

Ah hah! Android uses the Dropbear SSH utility, which requires a special key format. Now to check for a way to do key conversions without installing the package on my PC, I'm not sure whether it'll clobber OpenSSH.

[SteveRiley]

If you're able to install Jack Palevich's Terminal Emulator from the market and also some form of Busybox, I think I have a solution for you that will work with both hardware and virtual keyboards.

1. Generate a key on your phone. The private key will go into the file /sdcard/phone.key. The output of the command, which is the only way to obtain the public key, will be piped into the file /sdcard/phone.pub.

dropbearkey -t rsa -f /sdcard/phone.key > /sdcard/phone.pub

2. Get the phone.pub file over to your server somehow. Here's how I did it: emailed it as attachment to myself from the phone; opened the email on my PC in KMail; saved the attachment into my home directory; SCPed it to my server.

3. SSH into your server using your password.

4. Open ~/.ssh/authorized_keys in a text editor, read in phone.pub, and delete these two lines:

Public key portion is:
Fingerprint: [I]<blahblahblah>[/I]

5. Save the file and exit the editor.

You should be good to go. I successfully SSHed into my server from my phone with:

ssh -i /sdcard/phone.key root@mini2140

Neat!

[Xplorer4x4]

Terminal Emulator and Busybox are pretty much standard across custom roms, and I always use custom roms. I could be wrong, but I think Termianl emulator was the reason I was using the Telenet app. Regardless, I would have to get the keys working on desktop to server before doing it over android, and even if I get it working, I still need a password manager for things like our email accounts, mysql root password(no way to use keys for this as far as I know), log ins for tech support to our hosting(3 servers-irc,site back ups and live server), and the list goes on.

On the subject of key authentication not working, your directions are exactly the same as the various guides I tried following. They were a bit more detailed but the basics were the same with the exception of ssh-copy-id. In the examples I followed, it was using scp and cat. I did not password protect the keys, but every time I tried logging in to the server, it still prompted me for a password rather then using my key. I was using ssh from the cli in konsole.

[SteveRiley]

Terminal Emulator and Busybox are pretty much standard across custom roms, and I always use custom roms. I could be wrong, but I think Termianl emulator was the reason I was using the Telenet app.

On my G2, the hardware keyboard can create almost all characters in Terminal Emulator except those under Alt+Space -- for some reason, that key combination is ignored. However, with Menu -> Virtual Keyboard, I can get to everything.

Regardless, I would have to get the keys working on desktop to server before doing it over android, and even if I get it working, I still need a password manager for things like our email accounts, mysql root password(no way to use keys for this as far as I know), log ins for tech support to our hosting(3 servers-irc,site back ups and live server), and the list goes on.

Yeah, now that I understand the full extent of your requirements, getting key-based SSH to work isn't satisfactory.

On the subject of key authentication not working, your directions are exactly the same as the various guides I tried following. They were a bit more detailed but the basics were the same with the exception of ssh-copy-id. In the examples I followed, it was using scp and cat. I did not password protect the keys, but every time I tried logging in to the server, it still prompted me for a password rather then using my key. I was using ssh from the cli in konsole.

On the server, the public key (created on the workstation) must be contained in the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, where ~ is, of course, the home directory for the user supplied on the SSH commandline. On the workstation, the private key must be ~/.ssh/identity (version 1) or ~/.ssh/id_rsa (version 2). Alternately, if the private key file has some other name, you have to indicate the path:

ssh -i [i]/path/to/private-key-file[/i] [i]user[/i]@[i]host[/i]

[Xplorer4x4]

On my G2, the hardware keyboard can create almost all characters in Terminal Emulator except those under Alt+Space -- for some reason, that key combination is ignored. However, with Menu -> Virtual Keyboard, I can get to everything.

I could be mistaken in regards to what app was the problem.

Yeah, now that I understand the full extent of your requirements, getting key-based SSH to work isn't satisfactory.

True, but I appreciate the tips on getting keys working, and I do want to get key authentication working on atleast one of our servers using Ubuntu 12.04. Actually it is the Ubuntu server that I was trying to get authentication working on previously.

On the server, the public key (created on the workstation) must be contained in the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, where ~ is, of course, the home directory for the user supplied on the SSH commandline. On the workstation, the private key must be ~/.ssh/identity (version 1) or ~/.ssh/id_rsa (version 2). Alternately, if the private key file has some other name, you have to indicate the path:

ssh -i [i]/path/to/private-key-file[/i] [i]user[/i]@[i]host[/i]

Hmm, thinking back on it I wonder if maybe the key I was transferring it to identity rather the is_rsa as I am using V2. I know I was putting it in the proper location though.

[SteveRiley]

IHmm, thinking back on it I wonder if maybe the key I was transferring it to identity rather the is_rsa as I am using V2.

Sounds like something to double-check.