passgen - Generate passwords

passgen is a simple shell script that generates a secure, pseudo-random password. It can be used to generate passwords of a specified length and character set. The default character set includes uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and a few special characters. You can customize the character set and length of the generated password using command-line options.

Usage

Simply run passgen in your terminal to generate a password with the default settings. You can customize the length and character set of the generated password using the following options:

• --length or -l: Specify the length of the password (default is 20 characters).
• --special or -s: Include and extended range of special characters in the character set.
• --nospecial or -n: Use only letters and numbers in the character set.

Examples

Generate a password with the default settings:

• passgen

Generate a password with a length of 16 characters:

• passgen --length 16

Generate a password with the extended special characters set:

• passgen --special

Generate a password using only letters and numbers:

• passgen --nospecial

Script

By the time you’re reading this, Aegix will ship with the passgen script in your path.

Here is the passgen shell script:

#!/bin/sh

# Default settings
DEFAULT_LENGTH=20
LENGTH=$DEFAULT_LENGTH
CHARSET='A-Za-z0-9_!@#$%^&*'

# Process command-line options
while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
 case "$1" in
   --length|-l)
     LENGTH="$2"
     shift 2
     ;;
   --special|-s)
     CHARSET='A-Za-z0-9_!@#$%^&*\|/~`'
     shift
     ;;
   --nospecial|-n)
     CHARSET='A-Za-z0-9'
     shift
     ;;
   *)
     echo "Usage: $0 [--length|-l length] [--special|-s] [--nospecial|-n]"
     exit 1
     ;;
 esac
done

# Generate a random string with the specified length and character set
tr -dc "$CHARSET" < /dev/urandom | fold -w "$LENGTH" | head -n 1

If it is not already on your system, you can add it by following these steps after you cd ~/.local/bin:

touch passgen && chmod +x passgen && vim passgen

Set paste mode in vim with :set paste and then press i to enter insert mode.

Then paste the script above into the passgen file you just created. (To paste in the terminal (including in vim) on Aegix, you can use Alt + v.) ((To save and exit vim, press Esc to exit insert mode, then type Shift + ZZ.))

Now you can generate a password with passgen from any terminal on your system.