Posted by Steve on Wed 29 Sep 2004 at 08:45
Generating good passwords is hard, but a necessary evil. It's a good practise to use different passwords for different machines, websites, and accounts.
Enter pwgen a simple tool to generate a heap of passwords. When it is run it displays a large number of passwords, and you can simply choose the one that appeals to you the most.
For an alternative application you might consider gpw. This produces passwords which are deliberately designed to be pronouncable.
When it comes to managing a collection of passwords you have a number of choices. Firstly there is the lightweight application zsafe which allows you to create catagories, then nest entries inside them.
Alternatively there are password managers designed for the various desktop environments. KDE has the the kwallet program, contained in the kwalletmanger package.
GNOME has a similar application called the gnome-keyring.
Each of the preceeding applications integrates nicely into its respective environment, and allows you to keep a collection of account details securely.
This article can be found online at the Debian Administration website at the following bookmarkable URL (along with associated comments):
This article is copyright 2004 Steve - please ask for permission to republish or translate.