SYNOPSIS

       pwgen [ OPTION ] [ pw_length ] [ num_pw ]

DESCRIPTION

       The  pwgen  program generates passwords which are designed to be easily
       memorized by humans, while being as secure  as  possible.   Human-memo-
       rable  passwords  are  never  going  to be as secure as completely com-
       pletely random passwords.  In particular, passwords generated by  pwgen
       without  the  -s option should not be used in places where the password
       could be attacked via an off-line brute-force attack.    On  the  other
       hand,  completely  randomly  generated  passwords have a tendency to be
       written down, and are subject to being compromised in that fashion.

       The pwgen program is designed to be used  both  interactively,  and  in
       shell  scripts.   Hence,  its  default  behavior  differs  depending on
       whether the standard output is a tty device or a pipe to  another  pro-
       gram.  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 (stdout) is not a tty, pwgen  will  only  generate
       one  password,  as  this  tends  to  be  much more convenient for shell
       scripts, and in order to be compatible with previous versions  of  this
       program.

       In  addition, for backwards compatibility reasons, when stdout is not a
       tty and secure password generation mode has not been  requested,  pwgen
       will  generate  less  secure  passwords, as if the -0A options had been
       passed to it on the command line.  This can be overriden using the  -nc
       options.   In the future, the behavior when stdout is a tty may change,
       so shell scripts using pwgen should explicitly specify the -nc  or  -0A
       options.   The  latter  is  not recommended for security reasons, since
       such passwords are far too easy to guess.

OPTIONS

       -0, --no-numerals
              Don't include numbers in the generated passwords.

       -1     Print the generated passwords one per line.

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

       -a, --alt-phonics
              This  option doesn't do anything special; it is present only for
              backwards compatibility.

       -B, --ambiguous
              Don't use characters that could be confused  by  the  user  when
              printed,  such  as 'l' and '1', or '0' or 'O'.  This reduces the
              words are printed by columns, and one password.

       -n, --numerals
              Include at least one  number  in  the  password.   This  is  the
              default if the standard output is a tty device.

       -H, --sha1=/path/to/file[#seed]
              Will  use the sha1's hash of given file and the optional seed to
              create password. It will allow you to compute the same  password
              later, if you remember the file, seed, and pwgen's options used.
              ie: pwgen -H ~/your_favorite.mp3#your@email.com gives a list  of
              possibles  passwords for your pop3 account, and you can ask this
              list again and again.

              WARNING: The passwords generated using this option are not  very
              random.   If you use this option, make sure the attacker can not
              obtain a copy of the file.  Also, note that the name of the file
              may  be  easily available from the ~/.history or ~/.bash_history
              file.

       -h, --help
              Print a help message.

       -s, --secure
              Generate completely random, hard-to-memorize  passwords.   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, --no-vowels
              Generate  random passwords that do not contain vowels or numbers
              that might be mistaken for  vowels.   It  provides  less  secure
              passwords  to  allow  system administrators to not have to worry
              with random passwords accidentally contain offensive substrings.

       -y, --symbols
              Include at least one special character in the password.

AUTHOR

       This    version    of    pwgen    was    written   by   Theodore   Ts'o
       <tytso@alum.mit.edu>.  It is modelled after a program originally  writ-
       ten  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.

SEE ALSO

       passwd(1)