============================
Ked Password Manager: README
============================
Copyright (c) 2003 Andrey Lebedev <andrey at micro.lt>
About
=====
Ked Password Manager helps to manage large amounts of passwords and
related information and simplifies tasks of searching and entering
password data.
KedPM written in python and can be run virtually on any platform python
interpreter can run.
KedPM written as extensible framework, which allows to plug in custom
password database back-ends and custom user interface front-ends.
Currently only Figaro PM back-end supported. To manage his passwords,
user can choose between GUI (GTK2 based graphical user interface) and
CLI (Command Line Interface).
Installation
============
Read INSTALL file provided in this distributions for installation
instructions.
Starting Ked Password Manager
=============================
To run Ked Password Manager, issue this command::
$ kedpm
This will run graphical user interface based on GTK2. Alternatively you
can use kedpm with command line user interface::
$ kedpm -c
Note: ``kedpm`` program should be located in your PATH.
If you have Figaro Password Manager database KedPM will try to open
it. To do it properly, KedPM will ask you for valid password.
After the first run KedPM will make a backup of existing fpm database
(located in file ``~/.fpm/fpm``) to file ``~/.fpm.kedpm.bak``. So if fpm
will break for some reason, you will be able to restore your old
database. Note, however, that database, saved by KedPM itself will not
be backed up.
If you have no Figaro Password Manager database at the moment, KedPM
will try to create one for you. It will ask you for a password to
encrypt password data with. Then KedPM will create empty FPM database.
Graphical User Interface
========================
GUI is implemented using GTK2 widget library. It means GUI will fit
nicely in Gnome2 environment, but does not require it for normal
operation.
To speed up your work with KedPM, GUI provides couple of keyboard
shortcuts:
=========== ==============================================
Ctrl+K Put keyboard focus on filter entry field.
Ctrl+Escape Clear filter and show all passwords in current
category.
=========== ==============================================
You can quickly copy to clipboard any of password information by
right-clicking on a password in the list and choosing respective item in
popped up menu.
Command Line Interface
======================
CLI should be quite intuitive for those, who has experience with Linux
shell. Password are placed in categories, like files are placed in
directories. You can move between categories with ``cd`` command, show
contents of category with ``ls`` command, and so on.
There is one difference however: passwords in database don't have unique
identifiers, like files in file-system. Passwords in KedPM identified by
their contents. For example, lets say you have a saved a password for
FTP login to your site ``www.homepage.org``. To display that password
all you need to type is ``show homepage``. This command will find the
password, that contain word ``homepage`` in one of its fields, and
display it to you. If KedPM has found several different password records
with that word, you will be able to choose one from the presented list.
Full list of commands can be retrieved with ``help`` command. You can get
help on particular command using ``help <command>``.
The "Parser" feature
====================
One of the essential functions of the password manager is helping you
to retrieve your passwords. On the other hand, password manager should
let you input new passwords to the database in convenient way.
The simplest way to enter the password that comes in mind is simple
dialog with password data fields. Today the substantial amount of
passwords come by email and entering such passwords is not very
convenient: you need to copy and paste several times, switching between
two programs after every operation.
The Parser feature of Ked Password manager try to solve that problem (at
least make it smaller). Parser asks you for a mail and tries to figure
out what information can be useful for storing in database. Parser
recognizes several common patterns, which can occur in password mails.
For example::
username/password: kedder/secret
or::
user : kedder
password: secret
hostname: kedpm.sourceforge.net
Parser feature is available in GUI from "Edit->Parse password" menu
item. In command line mode you can use ``new -p`` command - it will
fire up your favorite text editor for you to provide mail text.
Parser patterns
---------------
Starting from KedPM-0.4.0 you can edit patterns, used by parser to parse
text. This allows you to better adopt parser to your particular needs.
The format of patterns is:
============= =========================================
``{field}`` matches password field;
``{ }`` matches arbitrary number of spaces or nothing;
``{~regexp}`` matches arbitrary regular expression;
============= =========================================
For example, pattern::
User{~(name)?}{ }:{ }{user}
Will find string, starting with ``user`` or ``username``, followed by
colon and put string after colon to ``user`` field of password. This
pattern will recognize the following patterns in your mails::
username: andrey
or::
user : andrey
and automatically fill ``user`` field of password with string
``andrey``.
Check out parser! Tell me what you think.
.. vim: tw=72 nocindent et