I have never used a password manager, but some people insist on them. So I tried a few and every one of them worked by copying the password onto the clipboard.

I could then paste it into the password field of a website, then paste it into any document I wanted to. I checked Kclipper and found the last seven I tried sitting there, waiting to be pasted somewhere else. Clearing the clipboard did not clear these out.

One of them, MyPasswordSafe, has an icon for clearing the clipboard, but after it says it has cleared the clipboard I can still paste the last password into documents. It even has a setting to clear the clipboard after so many seconds, but that doesn't work either.

The clipboard is something that can hang onto a cleartext password for a long time, can be read by programs, and an inadvertent paste could be a problem.

So does anyone know of a password manager that can fill a password field without going through the clipboard ?

I gather that KeePassX has an autotype facility (which makes use of a hotkey to do things like enter both username and password), which would be a way of bypassing the clipboard.

I use MyPasswordSafe here, and the clipboard is being cleared (eg using the clear button, and on exit), so I'm not sure why it fails to on your particular setup; perhaps it is because of Kclipper. If it fails to clear the clipboard even on a plain KDE (I'm assuming you are running KDE), then it would merit a bug report.

Ah, but they don't take bug reports on the venerable Fedora 8 anymore.
So I went to the KeePassX site to download it, and they don't have binaries any farther back than F10
So I downloaded the source and tried to compile it. I got a string of errors 7 miles long, and a note that I don't have the most recent version of something.

But with F12 KeePassX is in YumEx, so I installed it.

And it worked.

And using the autotype feature it fills in both the username and the password, and does not use the clipboard. It enters the values where you put your cursor. So if you put it in the wrong place, well you're going to be looking at your password in cleartext, but it doesn't leave it hanging around on the clipboard, or preserved in kclipper. I pasted the clipboard into a text document, and got what was previously copied onto the clipboard.

Thank you very much.

So where do I click around here to say thank you ?

Nice that the current version still works under F8.

Yeah, true. Though the same problem happens with cut and paste - I've been caught out a few times when an application has stolen the focus just as I was pasting a password from the clipboard.

You just click on the 'thumbs-up' symbol at the bottom right corner of a relevant post (only shows up if you are logged in).

Really ? That's not been my experience. I'd love for it to work with F8. F8 is perfect in every way, except I can't get KeePassX installed in it. F12 will be fine in time, I'm sure, but Fs 9-11 weren't. Its the new KDE that I don't like. KDE 3.5 is pure excellence. Then they stepped off a cliff.

Have you tried Opera & its pw mgr. named "The Wand"?

It's easy to use; does not, AFAIK, use the clipboard; accommodates more than 1 user name per web site; & can have a master password.

No, I haven't tried Opera. But I have gotten KeePassX going in Fedora 8 : )
I just signed into LinuxQuestions.org with it. AutoType filled in both the username and password and hit enter for me, and I was in : )

But even KeePassX has Copy to Clipboard as its first two options, like no thought is given to security at all. Now I understand that the plaintext password is sent across the internet, but gee, why do more things unsecurely just because some are ?

Maybe I'll take Opera for a spin.