Passbolt Initial Impressions

By Benjamin Sanders | | passbolt | 3 mins Read

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So, today (4th of April 2023) I decided to spin up a Debian 11 VM to install passbolt to and try out self-hosting a password manager. I currently use 1Password and don’t really see myself switching to a self-hosted solution but figured there is no harm in trying out the “competition”.

The install process so far has been super easy and CLI oriented. I decided to go with the non-Docker install because I like running things directly in the VM. Maybe I’m finally get old -shrug-

Anyway, the process was basically going to https://www.passbolt.com/ce/debian and follow the instructions in CLI.

wget "https://download.passbolt.com/ce/installer/passbolt-repo-setup.ce.sh" 
wget "https://github.com/passbolt/passbolt-dep-scripts/releases/latest/download/passbolt-ce-SHA512SUM.txt" 
sha512sum -c passbolt-ce-SHA512SUM.txt && sudo bash ./passbolt-repo-setup.ce.sh || echo "Bad checksum. Aborting" && rm -f passbolt-repo-setup.ce.sh
sudo apt install passbolt-ce-server

One thing I notice is that it installs certbot implying I should be using a domain and not attempting to this locally. Let’s see what happens when I try it locally anyway.

Okay, it’s going to start off creating an empty database.

Image of woman with black painted fingernails taking notes in notebook using silver and gold pen.

Saved the MySQL user and password in 1Password 😆 then got to the TLS section and hit none since I don’t have a domain to use currently. Looks like I can provide the IP of the server instead though which I’m entering in 192.168.1.173.

Image of woman with black painted fingernails taking notes in notebook using silver and gold pen.

Setting up PHP 7.4 and MariaDB 10.5 so a little out-of-date on the PHP but not too bad. We’re done!

Image of woman with black painted fingernails taking notes in notebook using silver and gold pen.

Let’s go the server’s IP and see what it looks like now and get it configured.

Cool as mentioned in the wiki I get the not yet configured page https://help.passbolt.com/hosting/install/ce/debian/debian.html

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Entering in the database information

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🤔 Hmm getting that it can’t connect to the database.

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I know it’s online and I can connect.

ben@passbolt-test:~$ mysql -u passboltadmin -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 41
Server version: 10.5.18-MariaDB-0+deb11u1 Debian 11

MariaDB [(none)]> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| passboltdb         |
+--------------------+

I know for sure MariaDB is running.

ben@passbolt-test:~$ sudo systemctl status mariadb.service
● mariadb.service - MariaDB 10.5.18 database server
	 Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mariadb.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
	 Active: active (running) since Tue 2023-04-04 11:47:04 EDT; 11min ago

Found it!

I was trying to use the server’s public IP and needed the local IP 127.0.0.1.

Source: https://community.passbolt.com/t/trying-to-configure-passbolt-database-configuration/5322

Got it going and got a neat message setting up. Lmao

Image of woman with black painted fingernails taking notes in notebook using silver and gold pen.

Tried setting up the iOS app but guess it won’t work without a TLS certificate of some kinds which makes sense. https://community.passbolt.com/t/oops-something-went-wrong-when-trying-to-set-up-mobile-transfers/5124

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All-in-all I’m going to keep trying out Passbolt but don’t see myself switching from 1Password to self-hosted but might be good to have a local backup.