PWMAKE(1)

💖 PWMAKE(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the General Commands Manual ✨ this is pwmake, and she's a little icon for making passwords that are random but also... pronounceable?? yes queen, both. 💅

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🌸 NAME 🌸

pwmake — a simple tool for generating random, relatively easily pronounceable passwords 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

pwmake <entropy-bits>

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So pwmake is this simple, configurable little tool that generates random and relatively easily pronounceable passwords. She lets you say exactly how many entropy bits go into the password you're making. no cap. 🫶

The entropy is pulled straight from /dev/urandom. that's the source, that's the vibe. 🌈

Now let's talk bits, because the bit count is literally the whole personality here:

• The minimum number of bits is 56. That's usable for passwords on systems/services where brute force attacks have a very limited rate of tries. like, the attacker's just not getting many swings. 🙈
• 64 bits should be adequate for applications where the attacker does not have direct access to the password hash file. 👑
• But for situations where the attacker might obtain direct access to the password hash, or the password is being used as an encryption key, you should use 80 to 128 bits — depending on your level of paranoia. 😭 choose your own adventure, bestie.

💀 Any entropy-bits value outside of the 56 to 256 bits range will be adjusted to fit within the allowed range. so if you try to be extra, she'll just quietly fix you. periodt.

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

The first and only argument is the number of bits of entropy used to generate the password. that's it. one argument, main character energy, no entourage. ✨

• <entropy-bits> — how many bits of entropy go into your password. (she'll clamp anything outside 56–256 back into range, so don't stress 💖)

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• /etc/security/pwquality.conf — the configuration file for the libpwquality library. 🍓

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⭐ RETURN CODES ⭐

• 0 on success 🥳
• non zero on error 😭

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

pwscore(1), pam_pwquality(8)

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

Tomas Mraz <tmraz@redhat.com> 🫶

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one came to you from Red Hat, Inc., dated 2021-04-01 — go make a password that slays and stays unguessable 💖✨🔐🦋🌸💅