14.1. Some basic Security Tools

md5sum

Compute an md5 checksum (128-bit) for file “file_name” to verify it's integrity. You normally use the “ md5sum -c” option to check against a given file (often with a “.asc” extention) to check whether the various files are correct, this comes in handy when downloading isos as the checking is automated for you.

Command syntax:

md5sum file_name
mkpasswd -l 10

This command will make a random password of length ten characters. This password generator creates passwords that are designed to be hard to guess. There are similar alternatives to this program scattered around the internet.