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keepassxreboot / keepassxc

KeePassXC is a cross-platform community-driven port of the Windows application “Keepass Password Safe”.
https://keepassxc.org/
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Provide easy way to export and import attachments #10475

Open FloLrx1981 opened 5 months ago

FloLrx1981 commented 5 months ago

Overview

Attachment are empty files after import from XML file

Steps to Reproduce

Using the CLI

  1. Create a keepass (cli db-create)
  2. Add an entry with an attachment (cli add)
  3. Export the keepass as an xml file (cli export)
  4. Create a second keepass by importing the previous xml (cli import)

Expected Behavior

In the new keepass, I expect that the attachment has data

Actual Behavior

The attachment has a size of zero bytes in the new keepass

Context

I would like to add autotype with the cli As it seems to be not implemented, I export the database as XML, I modify the XML and then I import the XML Even if I don't modify the xml by hand, the attachments are empty after the import

Version

KeePassXC - Version 2.7.7 Revision: 68e2dd8 Qt 5.12.8 Debugging mode is disabled. Operating system: Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS CPU architecture: x86_64 Kernel: linux 5.15.0-101-generic Enabled extensions:

Operating System: Linux Desktop Env: Gnome Windowing System: X11/Wayland

droidmonkey commented 5 months ago

Attachments are not exported to xml, they are "outside" the xml. You will have to save attachments manually and re add them.

scollovati commented 4 months ago

This is a missing feature already discussed here in the past https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/8494 :(

guenther-brunthaler commented 1 month ago

Attachment are empty files after import from XML file

This is not generally true.

I have found out that it depends on the Keepass Database Format.

Unless certain features of KeePassXC are used which are only supported by the newer 4.0 format, KeepassXC allows to select the storage Format of the kdbx file, defaulting to KDBX 4 but still supporting the older KDBX 3.1 format.

I was able to export the full contents of my KeePassXC database, including attachments such as SSH keys and OTP secrets, to an XML file after converting the database to 3.1 format first.

When I then re-imported the XML file into a new kdbx database, all previous information (i.e. also the attachments) was still present and complete (i.e. not just empty files).

I wanted to export the database to XML for various reasons.

Firstly, I wanted to put the XML files under version control.

Secondly, I wanted to remove KeePassXC's internal version history before committing the XML files, because version control inside version control is inefficient (resulting in huge deltas by the external version control software).

Finally, removing the trashcan and the internal version history can significantly reduce the size of the XML file. It also gives smaller *.kdbx files after re-importing the XML files into new ones.

Such removal is easy be filtering the XML file, but hard to do manually in the KeePassXC GUI because there is no way to globally purge all version history and "trashcan" items (which I also wanted to exclude from the external version control using git).

This approach works unless KXBX 4.0 specific features are used within the KDBX file.

Remember that only exporting the 3.1 format to XML retains all features such as attachments.

In addition, the XML format must be chosen for the export, and the keepassxc-cli tool must be used to perform the import/export.

droidmonkey commented 1 month ago

Such removal is easy be filtering the XML file, but hard to do manually in the KeePassXC GUI because there is no way to globally purge all version history and "trashcan" items

Just disable history for the database in database settings, press ok. All history will be gone.

Empty recycle bin to remove "trash" items.

For awareness, kdbx 4 standard moved the attachments outside the XML which is why they are not exported to kdbx 4 compliant xml.

guenther-brunthaler commented 1 month ago

Just disable history for the database in database settings, press ok. All history will be gone.

This was in fact invaluable advice! Thank you.

I did not get the connection between the trashcan, the history, the max. history entries setting, and the enabled-status of the latter setting.

My mistake was that I thought disabling the "max. history entries" setting would also disable the history, while it actually did the exact opposite.

Now I do the following to minimize the size of a database snapshot before archiving it externally:

For awareness, kdbx 4 standard moved the attachments outside the XML which is why they are not exported to kdbx 4 compliant xml.

Fortunately, I do not need the XML file any longer due to the above procedure.

I only used it to minimize the database snapshots for archiving.

On a more general level, however, an export format which is unable to preserve all the data is of questionable benefit.

In fact, I did lose several SSH keys in the past before I realized the attachment were present but empty files after re-importing, because I assumed the export to be lossless.

It was easy enough to deploy new SSH keys in my case, so it was only a minor annoyance.

Of course it was my mistake, I should have read the manual more carefully. But who does nowadays.