OpenSUSE Linux Rants

When you have the level of paranoia that I do, being able to generate ultra-secure passwords is a very nice thing.

My bash prompt is also something I take great pride in. Not only that, I really like it.

Well guess what, folks… you can do both with the same file. This would be your .bashrc file. Here’s a basic look at my prompt:

[1850][scott@laptop:~]$

It shows me the time, the account with which I am logged in, the hostname of the local machine, and the present working directory. All handy things to know.

Now, for the password generation thing, check this out:

[1855][scott@laptop:~]$ genpasswd 64
(#b-p>yi>ojSw@oS6PN,uo_A`;.}DuyfG{levk[Q$UgfrmAkE^t|&)dZb!Nry;
[1855][scott@laptop:~]$

You can make rainbow tables ’til the end of time, and let John the Ripper go on the /etc/shadow file with that password in it, and you ain’t gonna be cracking that password.

If this is interesting to you, or you have other suggestions of a similar nature, please, let’s have ’em.

That all said, here’s the .bashrc file that makes this prompt and password generator possible:

# /etc/skel/.bashrc:                                          
# This file is sourced by all *interactive* bash shells on startup.  This
# file *should generate no output* or it will break the scp and rcp commands.

# colors for ls, etc.
eval `dircolors -b /etc/DIR_COLORS`
alias d="ls --color"
alias ls="ls --color=auto"
alias ll="ls -al --color"

# Change the window title of X terminals
case $TERM in
        xterm*|rxvt|Eterm|eterm)
                PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"'
                ;;
        screen)
                PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033_${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/$HOME/~}\033\\"'
                ;;
esac

##uncomment the following to activate bash-completion:
#[ -f /etc/profile.d/bash-completion ] && source /etc/profile.d/bash-completion


function proml {
local       BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"
local        RED="\[\033[0;31m\]"
local  LIGHT_RED="\[\033[1;31m\]"
local      WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
local LIGHT_GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
case $TERM in
    xterm*)
        TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'
        ;;
    *)
        TITLEBAR=""
        ;;
esac

PS1="${TITLEBAR}\
$BLUE[$RED\$(date +%H%M)$BLUE]\
$BLUE[$LIGHT_RED\u@\h:\w$BLUE]\
$WHITE\$$LIGHT_GRAY "
PS2='> '
PS4='+ '
}

proml

alias ifconfig="/sbin/ifconfig"

genpasswd() {
        local l=$1
        [ "$l" == "" ] && l=20
        tr -dc A-Za-z0-9\-_~\!@#$%^\&*\(\)\\\`\+\[\{\]\}\|\;:\",\<.\>/?\= < /dev/urandom | head -c ${l} | xargs
}

Hope that's as useful for you as it has been for me.