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Standard(?) Unix Notes

Background

I have tried a number of different note systems over the years, from online notes to Vim-wiki and Org-Mode and even just plain old text files. All have their benefits and issues.

More recently I have taken to GPG encrypting my notes in a process to improve my overall security and privacy.

Whilst migrating my passwords into Pass the Standard Unix Password Manager I was intrigued by the simplicity and ease of use in adding, managing and using passwords under this system.

Then this notes system started to brew in the back of my head. What if I replaced the password functionality of pass with a notes system. Sure I could include my notes into pass with it's multi-line ability. But as notes were added it would make accessing and managing my passwords more difficult. So I decided I really needed to keep my passwords and notes separate.

I decided to take the pass shell script and gut it, rename the functions and implement a system to encrypt/decrypt notes.

I use Yubikeys for my encryption and so have ensured that this script works with the Yubikey 5 NFC, Yubikey 4 and the Yubikey NEO.

Features

  • Secure encrypted notes
  • Support for GPG resident keys on Yubikey and PIV cards
  • Easily add, rename, copy and delete notes
  • Import text files as notes directly into your working notebook
  • Switch between notebooks easily
  • Multiple notebooks support. Easily add, rename, copy and delete notebooks
  • Bash Completion for sub commands and note/notebook names

Licence

This application is licensed under the 3 clause BSD licence. See LICENCE for details.

Contributing to the Project

Contributions are welcome. Please see docs/CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

Notes and Notebooks

This Notes system supports multiple notebooks.

  • To manage your notes you simply use the notes command.
  • To manage your notebooks you use the notebook command.

Installing and Uninstalling

Adding or removing this software is easy. See docs/INSTALL.md or UNINSTALL.md for details.

Setup and configuration

After installation you need to setup the environment. Standard Unix Notes does this with environment variables and the notes init command.

Managing Notes

The application manages notes in a similar way that Password-Store manages passwords. To add/edit/import/rename/copy/delete notes you use the appropriate sub-commands.

For example, to add a note you simply use

$ notes add this is my note title

The notes(1) application automatically replaces spaces in the note title with underscores.

For full details of commands available see docs/USING_NOTES.md for details or view the notes(1) man page.

Changing GnuPG encryption keys

Encryption keys do not last forever. From time to time they expire or become unsafe for some reason.

When you need to change the encryption key for a file you would normally decrypt and then re-encrypt it manually. Doing this for a series of files like you have in Notes would be a major pain. We have thought about this scenario and can automate it.

Notes has a special sub-command newkey to change the encryption keys of your notes. Using this command allows you to change the encryption keys for all of your notes at once rather than having to change them manually.

See docs/USING_NOTES.md for details.

Managing Notebooks

You can have multiple notebooks to organise your notes. Each notebook is just a plain UNIX directory and so could be managed by standard UNIX directory tools.

But to make it easier we have provided a tool called notebook that has a series of sub-commands for managing notebooks. See docs/MANAGING_NOTEBOOKS.md for full details of the command and sub-commands.

Journals

Also included is a journal(1) system for encrypted journal entries. See docs/JOURNAL.md for details.

Yubikey Integration

Standard Unix Notes supports GPG Keys on Yubikeys for GPG decryption. For more details see docs/YUBIKEYS.md.

PIV Integration

For more details on the proposed PIV integration see docs/PIV.md

RELEASE NOTES

See docs/RELEASE-NOTES.md for details.

ROADMAP

See docs/ROADMAP.md for details.

PACKAGING

We currently package for the following:

  • Source Tarball with makefile for installing
  • Debian .deb package suitable for Debian and Ubuntu based distributions

We are looking to package for other distributions depending on availability: see docs/PACKAGING.md for details.

BUGS & SECURITY

See docs/SECURITY.md for details on our security policy and docs/BUGS.md for reporting bugs.