diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'pwgen.1')
| -rw-r--r-- | pwgen.1 | 40 |
1 files changed, 29 insertions, 11 deletions
@@ -31,26 +31,38 @@ The .B pwgen program is designed to be used both interactively, and in shell scripts. Hence, -its default behavior is differs depending on whether the standard output +its default behavior differs depending on whether the standard output is a tty device or a pipe to another program. Used interactively, .B pwgen will display a screenful of passwords, allowing the user to pick a single password, and then quickly erase the screen. This prevents someone from -being able to "shoulder-surf" the user's chosen password. +being able to "shoulder surf" the user's chosen password. .PP -When standard output is not a tty, +When standard output (stdout) is not a tty, .B pwgen will only generate one password, as this tends to be much more convenient for shell scripts, and in order to be -compatible with previous versions of this program. In addition, for -backwards compatibility reasons, +compatible with previous versions of this program. +.PP +In addition, for +backwards compatibility reasons, when stdout is not a tty and secure +password generation mode has not been requested, +.B pwgen +will generate less secure passwords, as +if the +.B \-0A +options had been passed to it on the command line. This can be +overriden using the +.B \-nc +options. In the future, the behavior when stdout is a tty may change, so +shell scripts using .B pwgen -will not use upper case letters or numbers by default in this mode, -although this can be overridden using the -.B \-n -and -.B \-c -options. +should explicitly specify the +.B \-nc +or +.B \-0A +options. The latter is not recommended for security reasons, since +such passwords are far too easy to guess. .B .SH OPTIONS .TP @@ -115,6 +127,12 @@ 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... .TP +.B \-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. +.TP .B \-y, --symbols Include at least one special character in the password. .SH AUTHOR |