this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
627 points (87.4% liked)
Technology
59549 readers
3133 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The big issue isn't using it, it's syncing it.
User A used KeePass to order pizza and changed the Papa John's(heaven forbid) password while they were at it, on their desktop.
syncing: "oh! This file changed! Neat!"
User B picks up their phone and wants to order Papa John's at work. They try, but the password isn't right. Huh. They check KeePass. No issues. They go to change the password because they think something is wrong.
(All the while, they never thought to see if syncthing had been woken up in the background lately)
They change the password, update KeePass,
syncthing opens later, goes: "Oh, hi, User B's phone! I have a ne- Oh! You have a new password file too!!? Small world! I'll take both!
Now there's two files, two users who think they both made corrections to a password, syncthing thinking nothing is wrong, and someone has to now merge the newer KeePass file over the old ones by hand and realize what happened, but the bigger problem is, no one knows anything is wrong yet and it doesn't even take two users. This can just be you ordering on your phone after modifying on your desktop.
As an example. Imagine an insurance app, or a banking app, or the DMV... And you won't know for months down the line. It gets old.
Ah yeah, the fun of how that works. I recall that I had previously set up WebDAV to try to simplify my source of truth but I think that was just with the original KeePass app, not KeePassXC. I also wasn't trying to share passwords among multiple people but I do recall having issues when I was using Dropbox to sync to my phone since I would have to actually make sure Dropbox had updated the copy of the file which required me opening the app at the time.
I use KeePassXC on desktop and Keepass2Android on, well, android, and sync via nextcloud. They all seem to handle syncing correctly, merging changes made on one side, or showing a notification about a conflict, and KeePassXC can definitely merge the two "conflicted copies" together reliably with a couple of clicks (yes, a no-click solution would be better, I know, but it's not "manual"). Keepass2Android integrates directly with nextcloud and seems to handle it fine.
The situation can definitely be improved but it's not so bad for me. Also, two different people should probably use two different database files and not share passwords ;)
Not sure how syncthing handles conflicts, it's been many years since I tried it.