Pwman3 - tutorial¶

Pwman3 is a text centric password manager, and as such suitable for people wishing to use it over SSH or brail terminals.

Pwman3 is launched by typing pwman3 in your shell. Multiple start options are available. You can see them by typing:

$ pwman3 -h

For more information see also man pwman3.

When started for the first time, pwman3 will create a configuration file and your database (By default an SQLite database called pwman.db) in your home directory under .pwman. Before creating the database you will be asked to enter the master password which will be used to create an encryption key which will be used to encrypt the entries in your database:

$ pwman3
Please type in the master password:

Take note of this password! If you forget it, you won’t be able to read your password database.

Now pwman3 will wait for your input. The user interface is a simple loop waiting for user commands. You can see all the commands by typing:

pwman> help

Documented commands (type help <topic>):
========================================
cls   delete  exit    forget  list  open    print
copy  edit    export  help    new   passwd  tags

Aliases:
========
EOF  cp  h  ls  n  o  p  rm

Most commands have a single or two letter alias which is easy to remember.

As for a start you would probably like to store some passwords in your database, all you need to do is type the command new (or the alias n), and then insert the information as prompted:

pwman> new
Username: oz123
Password:
Url: example.org
Notes: Your notes
Tags: bank, private, my tag

Note the password is typed in without echoing it. Also note that two tags were separated by a space. Now, you can list your database entries with:

pwman> ls

ID USER URL TAGS 1 oz123 example.org bank, private, my tag

After a while you have had many new nodes inserted in your database:

ID  USER        URL                     TAGS
 oz123       example.org             bank, private, my tag
 oz123       intranet.workplace.biz  work
 oz123       shopping.com            shopping

Now searching for a searching entry can become quite tiresome. Hence, you can minimize the number of entries display by applying a filter to the list command:

pwman> ls work

ID  USER        URL                 TAGS
2   oz123       intranet.workplace.biz  workplace

If you don’t remember all the tags you created you can list the tags using the command tags:

pwman> tags
Tags:
bank,
private,
shopping

To see the content of a saved entry, you need to use the print command:

pwman> print 2
Username: oz123
Password: Org4n7#
URL: intranet.workplace.biz
Notes:
Tags: 'work'
Type Enter to flush screen or wait 5 sec.

You can also search an entry by typing part of the URL:

pwman> ls u:twit
ID  USER                     URL                      TAGS
115 oz123@mymail.com         twitter.com              web

Notice, that the print command expects an entry number as an argument. After printing the content of the entry, pwman3 will wait for Enter to be pressed or 5 seconds until it flushes the screen. This way, unauthorized eyes can not browse your screen and see your password. You can always scroll up to see the printed entry or print it again.

If you don’t want to type passwords and URLs constantly Pwman3 comes with two shortcut commands. The first shortcut is open, when calling it with an entry number it will open the URL in your default browser:

pwman> open 2

This will open the URL intranet.workplace.biz. After opening the browser you can use the copy command to copy your password to your clipboard. The password will be erased from the clipboard after 10 seconds:

pwman> copy 2
erasing in 10 sec...

After working with passwords for quite a while you can delete (or rm) entries or edit them:

pwman> rm 2
Are you sure you want to delete node 2 [y/N]?N

pwman> e 2
Editing node 2.
1 - Username: oz123
2 - Password: Org4n7#
3 - Url: intranet.workplace.biz
4 - Notes:
5 - Tags: workplace
X - Finish editing
Enter your choice:

You now know all the basics of using pwman3. If you need more help, try the command help to see more commands which are not documented here. Alternatively, you can open a ticket in https://github.com/pwman3/pwman3/issues.