Hi! :)
A short preamble: Gringotts is the name of the inviolable wizard bank in a
famous children book series, known in all the wizardry world for the truculent
fate that awaits all the wannabe robbers. I think it's a quite fitting name for
a program which purpose is to secure sensitive data, isn't it? :-)
Gringotts is a small utility for Linux and other unices that allows you to jot
down sensitive data (passwords, credit card numbers, PINs, friends' addresses)
in an easy-to-read, easy-to-access, and most of all very secure form. It is
inspired by a similar program for Windows (sorry, I can't remember its name)
that I used for quite a while (when I was a windows-ist)... it was very useful!
For encryptions, Gringotts makes use of the libGringotts library, that is based
upon libMCrypt and MHash by Nikos Mavroyanopoulos; in addition, it uses GTK+ 2
for the interface. Actually, it was born as a programming exercise for these
libraries, but the program itself is quite cute and useful all the same... in my
humble opinion!
Being Free Sofware, you're *encouraged* to take the code and do just whatever
you want with it.. as long as you retain the original copyright note, of course.
Every contribution is more than welcome! Now it's time to read INSTALL, or if
you want to step into the project. Please, do!
Have a nice day, and thank you very much,
Mano :)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Features
This application aims to be as complete and (ehm) feature-ful (?) as possible,
with a stress on lightness and simplicity. Currently it features:
* Fast, lightweight GTK2 interface
* Good integration with GNOME; still, it's not a GNOME application, so it's
perfectly integrated in all the others environments as well
* High stress on safety & security
* Not only "normal" string passwords can be used, but any file can be the
password to your data (see FAQ on this). You can even use entire floppy
disks!
* It features a "password-expiration" system, that warns you when the
password gets too old.
* Highly customizable
* 8 encryption algorithms are available (via libGringotts):
o The AES winner:
+ RIJNDAEL-128
o AES finalists:
+ SERPENT
+ TWOFISH
o Other AES contestants:
+ CAST 256
+ SAFER+
+ LOKI97
o Other strong algorithms:
+ 3DES
+ RIJNDAEL-256
* 2 160-bit hash algorithms, used to generate the key
o SHA1
o RIPEMD 160
* 2 compression types, with 4 compression levels each
o ZLib
o BZip2
* Complete & easy management of entries' order
* Small files can be embedded into any entry
* Complete Search function.
* Very intuitive usability, you won't need any manual (yet :)
* The standard linux file utility identifies Gringotts files correctly, from
version 3.38
Of course, the program lacks of many, many features, still.. please feel free to
write me <mailto:mano78@users.sourceforge.net> if you have some particular wish!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Troubleshooting for common problems with Gringotts
==================================================
(((((((
Taken from README.Debian by:
-- Bastian Kleineidam <calvin@debian.org>
)))))))
Startup failure
---------------
If gringotts crashes on startup with a segmentation fault or the message
"gringotts-CRITICAL **: Increase the memory locking limit to at least
51200000 bytes. Current limit: <n> bytes.", you have to increase the
locked memory on your system.
One option would be to copy the gringotts executable and make it not
SUID-root. If you're interested in the other option - read on.
It might also be a good idea to switch to check if your login manager
properly supports PAM (for example the wdm login program does not
support PAM).
a) Replace 'mylogin' with your username, and add the lines below
to /etc/security/limits.conf. See the documentation at the
beginning of limits.conf for more info about these values.
#<domain> <type> <item> <value>
mylogin soft memlock 50000
mylogin hard memlock 50000
b) Enable the pam_limits.so module in all PAM login managers, for
example in /etc/pam.d/{login,xdm,gdm,ssh}.
c) Log out, and log in again. Now your memlock limit should be
50000 KBytes (or roughly 50MB). Verify this by executing ulimit:
$ ulimit -l
50000
If you want to understand the above steps, read along.
Since kernel 2.6.9, the amount of locked memory is limited
for normal users. But gringotts needs locked memory, lots of it.
And when it does not get enough locked memory gringotts just exits.
So the above steps increase the amount of locked memory each user
is allowed to have.
a) The limits.conf configures resource limits. See the documentation
at the beginning of the file what each entry means.
b) The limits.conf directory is activated by the pam_limits.so PAM
module. So the module has to be enabled in all PAM applications
you use to login into your machine.
c) After logging in again, the limits should be set.
Note that Gringotts can only use memory locking when it has the setuid
bit set in its permissions. If you do not want memory locking enabled anyway,
use dpkg-statoverride(8) to remove the setuid bit. But I do not recommend
this.
Gringotts is very slow
----------------------
You most certainly have a debug build of gringotts which enables
mudflap support. This slows down gringotts a lot. To disable mudflap,
set this environment variable:
$ export MUDFLAP_OPTIONS="-mode-nop"
For more information about mudflap, see
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Mudflap%20Pointer%20Debugging
===================================================
Authors
This program has been originally designed & written by Germano Rizzo (aka Mano)
(aka me :-) <mano78@users.sourceforge.net>. I also translated it into italian.
Additional (precious :-) coding and french translation by Nicholas Pouillon (aka
Nipo) <nipo@ssji.net>.
German translation by Hermann J. Beckers <hjb-rheine@t-online.de>.
Nice patches and a major bugfix by James Antill <james@and.org>.
Many other people have given their unvaluable contribution to this project. Not
in any particular order:
Bob Mathews <bobmathews@alumni.calpoly.edu>
Anders Nordby <anders@FreeBSD.org>
Gabriele Giorgetti <gabriele_giorgetti@tin.it>
Lawrence MacIntyre <lpz@ornl.gov>
Gianluca Montecchi <gianluca@pluto.linux.it>
Kurt Hindenburg <khindenburg@iquest.net>
Christos Zoulas <christos@zoulas.com>
William McVey <wam@cisco.com>
Dan Frezza <dan@frezza.org>
Sebastien Bonnegent <sbonnegent@mediapps.com>
Rene Puls <rene.puls@gmxpro.de>
Phillip Hofmeister <plhofmei@zionlth.org>
Kevin Tucker <kevintucker@optushome.com.au>
Christian Lang <email@christian-lang.de>
Pavel Tavoda <tavoda@thr.sk>
Sherwin J. Singer <singer@chemistry.ohio-state.edu>
Terry Nightingale <tnight@pobox.com>
Antonella Beccaria <shalom@linux.it>
Pierluigi Perri <perri@netjus.org>
Leonardo Boshell <p@kapcoweb.com>
Ted Rolle <ted@php.net>
Davide Savazzi <davide.savazzi@corefandango.net>
Patrick <pit@netvigator.com>
Karl Lattimer <k.lattimer@nnc-consultancy.co.uk>
Massimiliano Bini <maxbini@inwind.it>
Jason Hildebrand <jason@peaceworks.ca>
Goetz Waschk <waschk@informatik.uni-rostock.de>
Timothy H. Keitt <tkeitt@mail.utexas.edu>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright notes
The "Gringotts" application itself is (c) (better, copyleft) 2002 by
Germano Rizzo <mano78@users.sourceforge.net>.
You can use, modify and redistribute them /as you wish/ (it's free software! :),
under the terms of the GNU General Public License
<http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>, v.2 or later.
My deepest thanks to the Free Software Foundation <http://www.fsf.org> and the
GNU project <http://www.gnu.org>for having created such a wonderful concept!
Being quoted by Joanna K. Rowling's books, the very name Gringotts could be (c),
(r) or (tm) by her or by someone in her behalf, altough I'm not aware of it. In
case I'm violating any right, just let me know.