How to get KWallet to use Keepass?

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1

I’ve used KWallet for ages and only last year migrated all my passwords to Keepass(XC) from KWallet and Firefox.

Now I remember it was said KDE/KWallet will be migrating to Secret Service (i.e. also Keepass), and I see that there is an option in the KWallet manager to “use KWallet as a Secret Service interface”, but the wording there is confusing me.

So I wonder:

  1. is there a way to make KWallet use the Keepass file directly (and how)

  2. if so, is it possible to do it in a way where I can use KWallet by default, but can still use KeepassXC (or Gnome Secrets or whatever other client) when it is the better suited tool (e.g. Firefox integration, mass-editing) so it does not mess up anything?

Or to put it my direct use case to it: What happens if I enable that option in KWallet? Will anything blow up and if so what?

2

My understanding from Macro’s blog is that

  1. KWallet can delegate to any Secret Service provider. I.e. it won’t be using Keepass’ files but ask Keepass’ service
  2. Yes, in such a setup the kwalletdprocess is merely a proxy on top of the Secret Service for apps that use the KWallet API

Actually (2) is always the case on recent Plasma, the default is just using ksecretd as the Secret Service.

I have personally not yet tried a setup with a “foreign” Secret Service, however, the setting you describe sounds very much like being the user facing option of what the blog linked above described as “An experimental feature” at the beginning of the year.

I guess the difficult part of a migration to an external Secret Service provider is to transfer the data.

It sounds as if you have done so manually so maybe that is not an issue for your.

Macro also blogged about a new app that would be a Secret Service frontend to replace KWalletManager so it might be able to import backup files previously exported by KWalletManager.

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3

Marco’s second blog post helps contextualize this quite a bit, thank you. I don’t know how I managed to skip that one. (I’m subscribed to KDE Planet and read the first post you linked).

I assume that this is not a But I remain confused at what this option does really and how to set it up:

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If it helps, I will explain my current password manager set-up in a bit more detail:

  • KeePassXC on laptop as the main password manager (Gnome Secrets and a CLI manager are also present to manipulate the same passwords DB/file if needed)
  • in Firefox (and Chromium when needed) I use the KeePassXC browser integration plugin
  • for Falkon I copy-paste the passwords from the KeePassXC main window, which is tedious – if KWallet helped to bridge here, that would be great
  • if I noticed correctly, Nextcloud sync client also relies on KeePassXC through a(n embedded) browser
  • I then sync the Keepass *.kdbx file(s) via my Nextcloud server to my (/e/OS) Android phone, where I use KeePassDX as the main mobile phone password manager
  • if I noticed correctly, some parts of KDE / Plasma (e.g. NetworManager and Akonadi/KDE PIM) still rely on KWallet, so some passwords remain there

As a consequence I have two separate password managers running at the same time.

It seems to me, that the best way forward right now is to wait for @mart to finish his new SecretService app, or am I missing something?

4

Yeah, the wording of both the option as well as the help text are a bit confusing.

My guess is that this is

[KSecretD]
Enabled=false

from Macro’s first blog.
I.e. that unchecking the option will set that Enabled flag to false.

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