01446 747702This method uses SHA to hash the date, runs through base64, and then outputs the top 32 characters.
date +%s | sha256sum | base64 | head -c 32 ; echo
This method used the built-in /dev/urandom feature, and filters out only characters that you would normally use in a password. Then it outputs the top 32.
< /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c${1:-32};echo;
This one uses openssl’s rand function, which may not be installed on your system.
openssl rand -base64 32
This one works a lot like the other urandom one, but just does the work in reverse. Bash is very powerful!
tr -cd '[:alnum:]' < /dev/urandom | fold -w30 | head -n1
Here’s another example that filters using the strings command, which outputs printable strings from a file, which in this case is the urandom feature.
strings /dev/urandom | grep -o '[[:alnum:]]' | head -n 30 | tr -d '\n'; echo
Another urandom.
< /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c6
This one manages to use the very useful dd command.
dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=32 2>/dev/null | base64 -w 0 | rev | cut -b 2- | rev
You can even create a random left-hand password, which would let you type your password with one hand.
</dev/urandom tr -dc '12345!@#$%qwertQWERTasdfgASDFGzxcvbZXCVB' | head -c8; echo ""
If you’re going to be using this all the time, it’s probably a better idea to put it into a function. In this case, once you run the command once, you’ll be able to use randpw anytime you want to generate a random password. You’d probably want to put this into your ~/.bashrc file.
randpw(){ < /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c${1:-16};echo;}
You can use this same syntax to make any of these into a function—just replace everything inside the { }
And here’s the easiest way to make a password from the command line, which works in Linux, Windows with Cygwin, and probably Mac OS X. I’m sure that some people will complain that it’s not as random as some of the other options, but honestly, it’s random enough if you’re going to be using the whole thing.
date | md5sum