As a sysadmin, I need to generate lots of passwords and sometimes if you do so without a script the generated password becomes really easy to guess, and also is hard to build a safe password.
Because of this I use this script to generate pseudo-random passwords, is not an un-crackable method but solves the main problem.
You can put this code at the end of your .bashrc file, in order to make it like a system command, please do not remove the other lines in the file.
skyline ~ $ cd skyline ~ $ vi .bashrc## ## By: Alvaro Soto - alvaro@headup.ws ## http://headup.ws/node/18 ## ## genpasswd: Generate a pseudo random password ## using a given length (default = 20). ## genpasswd() { local l=$1 [ "$l" == "" ] && l=20 tr -dc A-Z0-9_[%#?]a-z < /dev/urandom | head -c ${l} | xargs } ## ## ##skyline ~ $ . .bashrc skyline ~ $ genpasswd vie8e4d5naTCH70XvDyT skyline ~ $ genpasswd 10 ts0QtdPe_x skyline ~ $ genpasswd 5 5nw5Q
Is a less secure option to pwgen but it doesn't need a compiler.
skyline ~ $ emerge pwgen -s Searching... [ Results for search key : pwgen ] [ Applications found : 1 ] * app-admin/pwgen Latest version available: 2.06-r1 Latest version installed: 2.06-r1 Size of files: 30 kB Homepage: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pwgen/ Description: Password Generator License: GPL-2
In action:
skyline ~ $ pwgen 20 --capitalize --symbols --numerals --secure 1 H2]}K/JGVs<523Xuv?"Y skyline ~ $ pwgen 10 --capitalize --symbols --numerals --secure 1 JZ7a*&|:RP skyline ~ $ pwgen 5 --capitalize --symbols --numerals --secure 1 `Aw8D
