Generating random passwords

Here are a couple of ways of generating random passwords without using a "password generator". First, generate a random string like this:

$ dd if=/dev/urandom count=500 bs=1 | tr "\n" " " | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9]//g'

or like this

$ dd if=/dev/urandom count=500 bs=1 | md5

Then adjust the length by piping the output through cut(1):

... | cut -c-8

While the first option is more to type, it generates lower and upper case letters. The second option is easier to type but only generates lower-case passwords.

Update (Dec 12th, 2008): Fixed error. cut(1) must be used, not cat(1).

Big R Radio 90's Alternative

Just to save the link somewhere... This command tunes in on the Big R Radio 90's Alternative station.

mplayer http://livestream2.bigrradio.com/90salt

The new GenFw Tool

I've re-written the GenFw tool part of the TianoCore BaseTools project. The source code can be found here. In order to use the tool, the file Source/C/GenFw/GenFw.c must be replaced with the re-written one. Then, the base tools must be re-built. After that, the EDK2 build process can be started. It will automatically pick up the new tool which will brand an ELF file with an UEFI file type.

Currently, the re-written tool will not compile on Linux. The reason is that Linux lacks implementations of err(3), errx(3), warn(3), etc. library functions which the BSDs have. It should be easy to add some compatibility macros using a combination of fprintf(3), strerror(3) and exit(3). I might add those should the need arise.

Update (Dec 3rd, 2008): I've added the compatibility macros for Linux. An updated version of the source code can be downloaded here.