Ryan Collins

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Tag: passwords

  • Creating passwords

    From time to time, we all need to create a password. As a consequence of being human, we have a habit of picking really crappy passwords. Here are a couple of ways to generate passwords that should be more secure.

    pwgen

    You can use pwgen in Windows, OS X (install through Homebrew or MacPorts, or Linux. It is also available online, although the online versions may not give you all the features of the program.

    By default, pwgen attempts to create memorizable passwords that are somewhat random. Examples include In9taeme, Xo4eenet, and Riequig2. While not totally random, they are more secure than most methods of creating passwords. Using the program allows you to specify other requirements for the password and a more secure random mode.

    Keychain Assistant (OS X)

    Built into OS X, the Keychain Assistant handles secure password storage for the operating system. It also has a function to generate passwords. You can launch it from the application menu.

    KeepassX (Windows, OS X, Linux)

    I use KeePassX to store my passwords securely. There are other password wallets that you could use that would also generate passwords, such as 1Password and LastPass. I needed something that was cross platform though. It also has a feature to generate passwords.

  • OS X not saving passwords?

    About a month ago I noticed that passwords weren’t being saved in apps
    in OS X like Safari, Omniweb, etc. I didn’t bother trying to figure out
    the problem, until today when I would go to a site in Safari and it
    would ask to save the password. I said yes everytime, but it still
    didn’t save it. Finally I tracked down this blog post, OS X Keychain
    Not Saving Passwords…    :

    I struggled with this one for about a month before I finally dug into
    what was wrong and how to fix it. It all started when I reinstalled
    because I couldn’t get BootCamp installed because of volume
    fragmentation. Since then, my applications, specifically Mail.app and
    Adium, weren’t remembering passwords even if I checked the little
    “remember” box.

    Basically, for some reason, the keychain file at
    \~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain was now owned by root instead of by
    me. To check and fix from the commandline (\$ is the command
    prompt):

    $ ls -l ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain -rw-r--r-- 1 ryan admin 781380 Apr 8 11:17 (*deleted...*)
    My username is ryan. If it says anything else, use the following to
    change the ownership:
    $ sudo chown ryan ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain
    It will ask for the administrator password, and then change the
    ownership of the file. I don’t think repair permissions in Disk Utility
    would fix this problem.

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