pwmake - Man Page

pwmake <entropy-bits>

pwmake is a simple configurable tool for generating random and relatively easily pronounceable passwords. The tool allows you to specify the number of entropy bits that are used to generate the password.

The entropy is pulled from /dev/urandom.

The minimum number of bits is 56 which is usable for passwords on systems/services where brute force attacks are of very limited rate of tries. The 64 bits should be adequate for applications where the attacker does not have direct access to the password hash file. For situations where the attacker might obtain the direct access to the password hash or the password is used as an encryption key 80 to 128 bits should be used depending on your level of paranoia.

Any entropy-bits value outside of the 56 to 256 bits range will be adjusted to fit within the allowed range.

The first and only argument is the number of bits of entropy used to generate the password.

/etc/security/pwquality.conf - The configuration file for the libpwquality library.

pwmake returns 0 on success, non zero on error.

pwscore(1), pam_pwquality(8)

Tomas Mraz <tmraz@redhat.com>

pwquality.conf(5).