-B flag = don't include characters that can be confused for other characters (this helps when you give someone their password for the first time so they don't cause a lockout with, for example, denyhosts or fail2ban)
-s flag = make a "secure", or hard-to-crack password
-y flag = include special characters (not used in the example because so many people hate it -- however I recommend it)
"1 10" = output 1 password, make it 10 characters in length
For even more secure passwords please use the -y flag to include special characters like so:
pwgen -Bsy 10 1
output>> }&^Y?.>7Wu
Show Sample Output
for Mac OS X Show Sample Output
Prepending env LC_CTYPE=C fixes a problem with bad bytes in /dev/urandom on Mac OS X
Feel free to put this in your ~/.profile:
random(){ cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc $1 | head -c $2; echo; }
Then use it to generate passwords:
random [:alnum:] 16
Or DNA sequences:
random ACGT 256
A slightly shorter version. Also doesn't put a return character at the end of the password
Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?
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genPassword() { cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 10 | sed 1q }
pwgen 10 1
eeShoh6Eiv