Generate passwords using pwgen on Raspberry Pi

The pwgen program generates passwords which are designed to be easily memorized by humans, while being as secure as possible. Human-memorable passwords are never going to be as secure as completely completely random passwords.

This tutorial explains how to install pwgen on Raspberry Pi.

Use SSH to connect to Raspberry Pi. Update the package lists and install pwgen by using the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y pwgen

Now simply type the pwgen command:

pwgen

By default, pwgen generates 160 passwords which are 8 characters in length.

Run pwgen -c followed by the character length to generate a password with at least one capital letter:

user@raspberrypi:~ $ pwgen -c 5 4
ko0Ku Ain4e Thoa3 GeiF8

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 number of possible passwords significantly, and as such reduces the quality of the passwords. It may be useful for users who have bad vision, but in general use of this option is not recommended.

-c, –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, –num-passwords=num

Generate num passwords. This defaults to a screenful if passwords 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.

Links

https://linux.die.net/man/1/pwgen