Another Backup Plugin for KeePass

Another Backup Plugin (ABP) is a plugin for the KeePass password manager (Classic Edition). ABP automatically copies the initial password database to one or more backup files, so that the passwords can be recovered in case of loss.

Why use ABP? The problem of managing passwords is to keep them secret from others, while assuring that you yourself can always access them. KeePass by itself prevents others from accessing your passwords, but this is only half the solution. KeePass with ABP provides a more complete solution by assuring that you can restore the password database from an up-to-date copy, in case the original is lost, stolen, or destroyed. For more details, see the Frequently Asked Questions.

ABP Features: The typical ABP user has a single password database, which is opened automatically when KeePass starts up. The password database may be stored on a portable medium such as a USB flash drive, or on a PC's hard disk. ABP backs up the database when it's opened, if the backup copy is not already up to date, and it backs up the database when it's saved. The typical ABP user will not normally deal with other password databases, but if she does, backups for them will be disabled automatically, so that they cannot overwrite and destroy backups of her primary password database. ABP is designed so that a backup delay, such as when writing through a network, does not interfere with KeePass response time, nor with other backups. ABP development uses modern C++ design practices, with the goal of creating a bug-free, well documented, industrial-strength product.

Installation Instructions: If the following steps are too cryptic (no pun intended), see Installing and Configuring ABP.

1. Download and install ABP in the same way as you would any other KeePass plugin.
2. Start KeePass with a command line argument specifying the initial database to open, as well as a command line argument of the form /backup.path:BACKUP_PATH.

Author's Note: Another Backup Plugin was developed by Bill Rubin for his own personal use, and that of his family and friends, as an alternative to DB_Backup. ABP has been released publicly as open source in the hope that it may be of use to others. Bill welcomes your feedback.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Dominik Reichl for his terrific work developing KeePass, and for making numerous changes to KeePass at the author's request. ABP would not have been possible without Dominik's support. Thanks also to Mátyás Bene for raising an important command line parsing issue. Thanks to Doug Lovell for his helpful comments on this document. The author is grateful to the many (mostly anonymous) contributors to the KeePass forums, who have helped him in countless ways. Particular thanks to “Don” for helping me improve Configuration Hints for Non-Geeks. Final thanks to Bill Kempf for developing the Boost thread library, as well as to the UPX team for developing the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables.

Obtaining ABP Documentation: ABP documentation is available in any of the following ways:

1. The latest version of ABP documentation is available at http://ABP-KeePass.SourceForge.net.
2. If you have installed ABP, you can open the ABP documentation from the KeePass main window's “Tools” menu by selecting the “Help for Another Backup Plugin” menu item.
3. If you have downloaded the zip file for Another Backup Plugin from SourceForge, you'll find the ABP documentation by unzipping the zip file and opening AnotherBackupPlugin.chm.