Storing passwords safely on Linux

I wanted an easy way to store the different logins and passwords for various sites. I prefer something which is really secure and is not automatically accessible/unlocks when I login. Tried using Seahorse (eventhough it will unlock the keyring on login), but it seemed to lack a userid field. Storing such info in the comments feels not right to me. Plus, sometimes I want to store a bit of extra information (stuff like secret question + answers.. I find them insecure and prefer to just put another password there).

Initially I looked at Console Password Manager, but unfortunately Mandriva didn’t have a package for it. Further, development seemed to have stalled a bit.

I’ve settled now on a GnuPG plugin for Vim. Really easy to use, plus I can access it easily via SSH. Only drawback is that it will show all the passwords when I unlock/edit the textfile, ideally Vim should fold everything and so I can unfold the password I need at that time.

Mageia — Fork of Mandriva

I was pretty unhappy with what was going on at Mandriva. Many (all?) employees were fired, etc. At GUADEC I was told to wait a bit before switching distributions (assume they were planning the fork). I still investigated other distributions, but didn’t switch yet.

Anyway, noticed today that a lot of people from the distribution and former employees are forking Mandriva as Mageia. The name will again will take me a few years to get used to, but happy to see the independence. Loads of people are already offering their help. Pretty awesome to see this happen.