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To: Sean Murphy <smurphy@calarts.edu>
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From: Lowell Gilbert <freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org>
Date: 17 Dec 2005 08:46:32 -0500
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Random password generation
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Sean Murphy <smurphy@calarts.edu> writes:

> When creating user accounts with adduser you can have the system
> generate a random password.
> 
> Can you use a tool included in FreeBSD to change specific existing
> users passwords with a random one such as the one in adduser?

I've occasionally hacked something up along the lines of 
"(date;netstat;netstat -i)|gzip|uuencode foo|head|tail -1"
and I suppose you could add something to remove unacceptable
characters and bring pw(8) into the equation.

> it would also be usefull to do this from a input file to do multiple users.
> 
> The passwords I would need on the screen to give to the users.
> 
> If not is there an open source one to do this?

The makepasswd port is certainly more evolved than my hack.
Scripting it with pw(8) can be an exercise for the moderately
experienced system administrator...

-- 
Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area
		http://be-well.ilk.org/~lowell/