FascistCheck(3)

💖 FascistCheck(3) — a pro-active password checker library 💖

okay bestie, so this is a page from the Debian GNU/Linux manual, section 3 (that's the library-calls girlies), and we're about to get into FascistCheck. she's a password checker with main character energy and honestly? iconic. let's go 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

FascistCheck — a pro-active password checker library

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

#include <crack.h>

static char const CRACKLIB_DICTPATH[] =  ...;

extern char const *
FascistCheck(char const passwd[], char const dictpath[]);

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so cracklib is a library, and inside it lives the FascistCheck C function, and you can use her in a "passwd"-type program. the whole idea is simple bestie: you try to stop users from picking passwords that "crack" could guess, by filtering them out at source. cracklib is literally an offshoot of version 5 of the "crack" software, and she contains a <em>considerable number</em> of ideas nicked from the new software. no cap. 💀

the first formal argument password is the potential password. the second formal argument dictpath is the full path name + filename prefix of the cracklib dictionary database. and here's the vibe check: FascistCheck returns the NULL pointer for a good password, or a pointer to a diagnostic string if it's a weak password. so like. NULL means slay, a string means 💀.

the database is in a binary format generated by the utilities crack_mkdict(8) and crack_packer(8). on a Debian system the database lives in the directory defined by the static constant CRACKLIB_DICTPATH, and that's set to /var/cache/cracklib/cracklib_dict. and none of the subroutines in the cracklib libraries have this location hard-coded into their implementations — she's not clingy like that. it gets generated daily with the program /etc/cron.daily/cracklib. periodt.

🎀 FILES 🎀

• /var/cache/cracklib/cracklib_dict.[hwm|pwd|pwi] — the cracklib dictionary database files used by utilities.
• /etc/cron.daily/cracklib — the cracklib daily cron program that rebuilds the cracklib dictionary database.
• /etc/cracklib/cracklib.conf — the cracklib configuration file, used by the cracklib daily cron program to rebuild the cracklib dictionary database.
• /usr/sbin/crack_mkdict — a cracklib shell script to create the initial list of words for the dictionary database.
• /usr/share/doc/cracklib2-dev/examples — example cc(1) source files that show how FascistCheck is used. go look, bestie, it's giving tutorial 💅

🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

• crack_teststr(8)
• crack_mkdict(8)
• update-cracklib(8)
• /usr/share/doc/cracklib2-dev/examples
• /usr/share/doc/cracklib2/cracklib2.html
• /usr/share/doc/cracklib2-dev/cracklib2-dev.html

👑 AUTHOR 👑

cracklib2 is written by Alec Muffett <alecm@crypto.dircon.co.uk>. the manual was added by Jean Pierre LeJacq <jplejacq@quoininc.com>. kings, both of them 🫡

and that's the whole page, bestie. you understood it, I understood it, we're both literally so smart ✨

version 2.7-8.5, dated Wed, 3 Oct 2001 01:37:09 +0100 — yes she's an elder millennial of a manpage and she's still serving. mwah 💋 🦋🌸💖