In Windows XP I use KeePass Password Safe, however in Ubuntu I was wondering if there was a similar program I could use there as well. It turns out there is and it’s nearly identical to the Windows version, called KeePassX.

The great thing about KeePassX is that if you’re already using KeePass there is literally no learning curve whatsoever.  Almost every function and keystroke is identical between one and the other. Additionally, KeePassX is available via Add/Remove in Ubuntu, so you never have to see the command line to install the program.

My only complaint about the software is that I could not locate any way to send or retrieve a database via FTP, but other than that, everything else follows suit, right down to the custom icon choices should you choose to use that.

See video below for details on how it works.

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If you take advantage of Firefox’s ability to save passwords and prefill them on certain web pages, eventually you will have a bunch of dead or out of date entries. It is good idea to occasionally review and clean them out. Here is how (Firefox 3):

1. Go to Tools > Options.
2. Security tab > click Saved Passwords.
3. Click Show Passwords. It is good to show the passwords in the event you have multiple entries and some are not correct.
4. Highlight and remove the dead entries.

That’s it. While keeping your saved passwords list clean isn’t going to give you a performance increase, it is overall good maintenance to perform on your Firefox browser.

KeePass Password Safe is a free password manager utility program that I’ve written about before. One question that came about is "Okay, so you can save a password file locally. But how about backing it up to a server?"

KeePass does in fact have the ability to do this via FTP.

Using the latest version 2.06 beta, you open your database and click File then Save As then Save to URL, like this:

From there a new window opens and looks like this:

Your URL is entered as ftp://ftp.example.com/MyDatabase.kdbx or something similar to it. After that you enter your FTP username and password in the fields below, then next to "Remember" you can opt to have the application remember your user/pass, remember user/pass for this session only or not remember at all.

"But I don’t have an FTP server!"

Your ISP most likely offers you free homepage space which is accessible via FTP. You can use that to store your password database to. See your ISP’s "personal homepage" options for more information on that.

"How do I know my password database is secure if on a remote server?"

Place a strong master password on the database. You do this from within KeePass itself. Never place a password database on a remote server that doesn’t have some kind of strong authentication to access it.

"Can I retrieve my password database from a remote FTP server without having a local copy?"

Yes. Click File, then Open, then Open URL. Enter your FTP information there and you can download the password database direct from FTP without ever having to save it locally. And if you modify it, yes it will save to the FTP location as well.

KeePass Password Safe is a free open source password manager for Windows. If you happen to be using something other than Windows there are contributed versions for PocketPC, Smart devices, Linux, Mac OS X, Blackberry and others.

One very cool feature of this app is the ability to use custom icons from any image to represent entries. Being that images are stored within the database, the app won’t "lose" them for any reason.

When you use Google image search you can quickly find the logos you need for your password entries.

For example, let’s say you have a Yahoo! Mail account stored. It looks like this:

You’ll notice the icon at top right is a key. We want to change this over to a Yahoo! logo for easy reference later.

From Google image search I searched for yahoo logo and found this:

This will work just fine.

Even though this image is large for an icon, that’s okay because KeePass Password Safe will auto-resize it.

I save this image locally, then click the icon button in the application next to "Icon" (see screenshot above where the key is), then click "Use custom icon".

Looks like this:

At the moment the Yahoo! logo I downloaded isn’t in there, so I click the "Add" button, locate the image I downloaded and added it in.

Now it looks like this (note the little Y! logo under Custom icons):

I select this entry and now this is what it looks like in my list:

When you start accumulating a lot of accounts for stuff you sign up for on the internet, having visual representations of what the service is by icon is very helpful.

If you get into the habit of image-searching a logo for the respective web site each time you add in an entry to the database, you’ll quickly discover that the visual reference really does make a difference. It may be small and seemingly insignificant, but in fact is a really good way of locating things quickly in KeePass Password Safe.

In addition this is also helpful if you have multiple accounts with the same web site.

Here’s a few examples:

Some PCMech specific stuff using the PCMech logo.

Some RoadRunner (my ISP) specific stuff using the RoadRunner logo.

Ustream accounts that I administer.

As said above, the visual reference really does make a difference.

Final note: KeePass Password Safe does not require the image to be .ICO specific. It can be GIF, JPG/JPEG, BMP or ICO. It all works.