PWGEN(1)

NAME
pwgen - generate pronounceable passwords

SYNOPSIS
pwgen [ OPTION ] [ password_length ] [ number_passwords ]

DESCRIPTION
pwgen generates passwords which are designed to be easily memorised by humans, whilst being as secure as possible.

The pwgen program is designed to be used both interactively, and in shell scripts. Hence, its default behaviour 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 other versions of this program.

OPTIONS

-c, --capitalise, --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-capitalise, --no-capitalize
    Don't bother to include any capital letters in the generated passwords.

-s, --secure
    Generate completely random, hard-to-memorise 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...

-v, --version
    Display the program version and exit.

-h, --help
    Display a help message and exit.

-1  Print the generated passwords one per line.

AUTHOR
This version of pwgen was written by Ian Macdonald <ian@caliban.org>. 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 later rewritten from scratch by Theodore Ts'o. This man page is lifted largely from Theodore Ts'o's man page.

SEE ALSO
passwd(1)