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Diff: ChoosingPasswords
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Newer page: version 13 Last edited on Friday, October 22, 2004 5:20:10 pm by AristotlePagaltzis Revert
Older page: version 12 Last edited on Friday, October 22, 2004 9:05:12 am by PerryLorier Revert
@@ -1,36 +1,20 @@
 PerryLorier's prefered way of choosing passwords: 
- cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc ' -~' | fold -w 20 | head -1  
  
-I highly recommend it for everybody.  
+<verbatim>  
+tr -dc ' -~' < /dev/urandom | head -c 20  
+</verbatim>  
  
-(My new password is _]}e9pgU5-u6_hr[KF|* ).  
+(''every time you waste a cat, god kills a kitten''
  
-/dev/urandom is an interface to the kernel's random number generator. If you cat it, you'll get (mostly) random characters. See random(4) for information
+Highly recommended for everybody
  
-tr (1) is a character translator. -d stands for 'delete characters in this set' and -c stands for 'compliment'. If you check ascii(7) you will see that space and tilde ( ~) are the outer limits of the 'typeable' [ASCII] character set. The translator stage will throw away anything lower than space or higher than tilde (all the high-bit [ASCII] character ). 
+(His new password is <tt>_]}e9pgU5 -u6_hr ~[KF|*</tt> ). 
  
-fold(1) wraps lines to a certain width. -w 20 wraps at 20 characters (the default is 80.) Mere mortals will probably want to set this to around 8.  
+Another popular method is to take the first letter of each word in a line from a song (eg ''I want to ride my bicycle'' -> <tt>iw2rmb</tt>), or a phrase you can remember and changing letters to numbers (<tt>foursquare</tt> -> <tt>f0ursqu4r3</tt>)  
  
-head(1) (the opposite of tail(1)) returns the first lines of an input. head -1 returns only the first line. (use head -n 8 if you want some choices to pick from)
+If none of these methods are to your liking, you can always set your password to <tt>gandalf</tt>. This is highly original, and noone is likely to think of it
  
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+You might find more information on the SecurityNotes page.  
  
-PerryLorier won this week's [useless use of cat award|http://www.sektorn.mooo.com/era/unix/award.html]. The fold(1) is also redundant since head(1) has a __-c__ parameter. In a pinch,  
-  
- tr -dc ' -~' < /dev/urandom | head -c 20  
-  
-Cheers. :)  
-  
---AristotlePagaltzis  
-  
-''every time you waste a cat, god kills a kitten''  
-  
-----  
-  
-Another popular method is to take the first letter of each word in a line from a song (eg 'I want to ride my bicycle' -> iwtrmb), or a phrase you can remember and changing letters to numbers ('foursquare' -> 'f0ursqu4r3')  
-  
-If none of these methods are to your liking, you can always set your password to "gandalf". This is highly original, and no-one is likely to think of it.  
-  
-You might find more information on the SecurityNotes page.  
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 CategorySecurity