kb

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kb is a minimalist terminal-based knowledge manager.

Installation

Install the kb^AUR or kb-git^AUR package.

Purpose

kb is a text-oriented minimalist command line knowledge base manager. kb can be considered a quick note collection and access tool oriented toward software developers, penetration testers, hackers, students or whoever has to collect and organize notes in a clean way. Although kb is mainly targeted on text-based note collection, it supports non-text files as well (e.g., images, pdf, videos and others).

In few words kb allows a user to quickly and efficiently:

• collect items containing notes,guides,procedures, cheatsheets into an organized knowledge base;
• filter the knowledge base on different metadata: title, category, tags and others;
• visualize items within the knowledge base with (or without) syntax highlighting;
• grep through the knowledge base using regexes;
• import/export an entire knowledge base;

It is strongly suggested to add some kb aliases to really take advantage of the kb workflow.

cat <<EOF > ~/.kb_alias
alias kbl="kb list"
alias kbe="kb edit --id"
alias kba="kb add"
alias kbv="kb view --id"
alias kbd="kb delete --id"
alias kbg="kb grep"
alias kbt="kb list --tags"
EOF
echo "source ~/.kb_alias" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.kb_alias

Usage

List artifacts

List all artifacts contained in the kb knowledge base

kb list

or if aliases are used:

kbl

List all artifacts containing the string “zip”

kb list zip

or if aliases are used:

kbl zip

List all artifacts belonging to the category “cheatsheet”

kb list --category cheatsheet

or

kb list -c cheatsheet

or if aliases are used:

kbl -c cheatsheet

List all the artifacts having the tags “web” or “pentest”

kb list --tags "web;pentest"

or if aliases are used:

kbl --tags "web;pentest"

List using “verbose mode”

kb list -v

or if aliases are used:

kbl -v

Add artifacts

Add a file to the collection of artifacts

kb add ~/Notes/cheatsheets/pytest

or if aliases are used:

kba ~/Notes/cheatsheets/pytest

Add a file to the artifacts

kb add ~/ssh_tunnels --title pentest_ssh --category "procedure" \
   --tags "pentest;network" --author "gnc" --status "draft"

Add all files contained in a directory to kb

kb add ~/Notes/cheatsheets/general/* --category "cheatsheet"

Create a new artifact from scratch

kb add --title "ftp" --category "notes" --tags "protocol;network"

a text editor ($EDITOR) will be launched for editing

Delete artifacts

Delete an artifact by ID

kb delete --id 2

or if aliases are used:

kbd 2

Delete multiple artifacts by ID

kb delete --id 2 3 4

or if aliases are used:

kbd 2 3 4

Delete an artifact by name

kb delete --title zap --category cheatsheet

View artifacts

View an artifact by id

kb view --id 3

or

kb view -i 3

or if aliases are used:

kbv 3

View an artifact by name

kb view --title "gobuster"

or

kb view -t "gobuster"

View an artifact without colors

kb view -t dirb -n

View an artifact within a text-editor

kb view -i 2 -e

or if aliases are used:

kbv 2 -e

Edit artifacts

Editing artifacts involves opening a text editor. Hence, binary files cannot be edited by kb.

The editor can be set by the “EDITOR” environment variable.

Edit an artifact by id

kb edit --id 13

or if aliases are used:

kbe 13

Edit an artifact by name

kb edit --title "git" --category "cheatsheet"

or

kb edit -t "git" -c "cheatsheet"

Grep through artifacts

Grep through the knowledge base

kb grep "[bg]zip"

# or if aliases are used:
kbg "[bg]zip"

Grep (case-insensitive) through the knowledge base

kb grep -i "[BG]ZIP"

Grep in “verbose mode” through the knowledge base

kb grep -v "[bg]zip"

Import/Export/Erase a knowledge base

Export the current knowledge base

To export the current knowledge base:

kb export

This will generate a .kb.tar.gz archive that can be later be imported by kb.

If you want to export only data (so that it can be used in other software):

kb export --only-data

This will export a directory containing a subdirectory for each category and within these subdirectories we will have all the artifacts belonging to that specific category.

Import a knowledge base

kb import archive.kb.tar.gz

NOTE: Importing a knowledge base erases all the previous data. Basically it erases everything and imports the new knowledge base.

Erase the entire knowledge base

To erase the entire knowledge base just do:

kb erase

Reporting issues

Please report any issue here.