PWGEN

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: June 2001
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NAME

pwgen - generate pronounceable passwords

SYNOPSIS

pwgen [ OPTION ] [ pw_length ] [ num_pw ]

DESCRIPTION

pwgen generates passwords which are designed to be easily memorized by humans, while being as secure as possible.

The pwgen program is designed to be used both interactively, and in shell scripts. Hence, its default behaviour is differs depending on whether the standard output is a tty device or a pipe to another program. Used interactively, pwgen will display a screenful of passwords, allowing the user to pick a single password, and then quickly erase the screen. This prevents someone from being able to "shoulder-surf" the user's chosen password.

When standard output is not a tty, pwgen will only generate one password, as this tends to be much more convenient for shell scripts. This also assures that pwgen is compatible with a previous version of this program.

OPTIONS

-a, --alt-phonics: This option doesn't do anything special; it is present only for backwards compatibility.
-c, --capitalize: Include at least one capital letter in the password. This is the default if the standard output is a tty device.
-C: Print the generated passwords in columns. This is the default if the standard output is a tty device.
-n, --numerals: Include at least one number in the password. This is the default if the standard output is a tty device.
--no-numerals: Don't include a number in the generated passwords.
--no-capitalize: Don't bother to include any capital letters in the generated passwords.
-N, --num-passwords=num: Generate num passwords. This defaults to a screenful if passwords are printed by columns, and one password.
-s, --secure: Generate completely random, hard-to-memorize paswords. These should only be used for machine passwords, since otherwise it's almost guaranteed that users will simply write the password on a piece of paper taped to the monitor...
-h, --help: Print a help message.
-1: Print the generated passwords one per line.

AUTHOR

This version of pwgen was written by Theodore Ts'o <tytso@alummit.edu>. It is modelled after a program originally written by Brandon S. Allbery, and then later extensively modified by Olaf Titz, Jim Lynch, and others. It was rewritten from scratch by Theodore Ts'o because the original program was somewhat of a hack, and thus hard to maintain, and because the licensing status of the program was unclear.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 12:12:54 GMT, April 26, 2024