Generate a strong secret from the shell

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A good tool to generate strong passwords and secrets is "apg". You can get it with

sudo apt-get install apg

To create a strong secret for sessions, hashed Paperclip paths, etc. say

apg -m128 -a1 -E\'\"

Arguments explained:

  • The -m parameter defines the secret length
  • -a1 makes apg choose from all 7-bit ASCII characters instead of just the alphabet
  • -E\'\" excludes quote characters so you can easily paste the secret into a Ruby string

Rails can also generate secrets that can be used for secret_key_base:

$ bin/rails secret
5693040b90b1b09d0a73364d950f15e3a9604403c8e81c6e5bb8b51d0981ef3bbde15a52bf5df41ac4974675bb8e31d69d03490dc11abd1086c873783d1be607
Profile picture of Henning Koch
Henning Koch
Last edit
Daniel Straßner
Keywords
console, passphrase, generator
License
Source code in this card is licensed under the MIT License.
Posted by Henning Koch to makandra dev (2010-09-30 12:28)