vim + gnupg = password manager

After finding that there are very little native password managers for linux, I decided to see if I could find a way to open my encrypted password file using a console-based editor without putting any plain text onto the disk at all (ie. transparent editing of gnupg encrypted files).

I stumbled onto the vim website (by way a Google search) and found a nice little script (plugin) that does all this for me!

Initially, I had some issues with getting it working but that was mainly due to exporting $GPG_TTY incorrectly :-P

However, as I use screen to manage everthing I do from the one terminal window/ssh session (vim incuded), the plugin works fine but fails to decrypt files when vim is invoked as a new screen.

I suspect that it's attributed to the $GPG_TTY variable, but my knowledge of screen and some other aspects of Linux are limited.

I now use vim + gnupg for my encrypted password file.


UPDATE 21/08/2009 @ 13:15
There seems to be an issue where the the GPG_TTY variable needs to re-exported every time you change to a another screen/pts. I have made myself a workaround, whereby I run a simple script that first exports the variable and then opens vim with the encrypted pwd file, but then vim removes the standard UDLR keybord controlls and falls back to classic vi mode. *sigh*