Random password generator: many, in columns, on command line, in Linux

Question

A while back, I came across a random password generator for the command line that displayed a grid of "memorable" passwords. Output was something like this:

adam@host:~$ CantRememberThisCommand
lkajsdf   aksjdfl
kqwrupo   qwerpoi
qwerklw   zxlkelq

The idea was that you could run this utility while someone was looking over your shoulder, and still pick a password with some level of secrecy due to the large number of choices.

I cannot remember what this utility was called. Oh interwebs, can you help?

Solution 1

Sounds like you want pwgen.

There are also some interesting ways to do this without installing additional software, but the 5-letter command is a bit easier to remember :)

Solution 2

According to your example output pwgen is a good guess (see the answer of John T). But there are many such tools available:

• pwgen - generate pronounceable passwords
• gpw - program to generate pronounceable passwords
• apg - generates several random passwords

Also password managers such as KeePassX provide a passwort generator (but it does not focus on commandline usage nor on pronouncable passwords).

Solution 3

No need to install extra packages as OpenSSL should be installed on most machines. we can use the following code to generate an random password:

openssl rand -base64 10

Comments

[Tom A]

Not quite an answer to your question, but Steve Gibson has something like this available online at grc.com/ppp.htm

[John T]

You're more than welcome :)

[spikeheap]

I keep coming back to this page because roughly every 6 months I need to generate a password but forget the command! Thanks!

[Timo]

This is very handy, but strictly speaking taking random bytes and encoding them as base64 string does not necessarily mean a random string. E.g. all 10 char passwords generated like this will end in '=' (because of padding). Also the only other non alpha numeric characters included in these are + and /, which may not be optimal.

[Daniel Earwicker]

Use a value that is a multiple of 3 (e.g. openssl rand -base64 12) and there will be no trailing = or ==.

[Sharak]

add alias newpass="openssl rand -base64 12" to shell config ie. ~/.zshrc for quick generation of random strings with newpass command