cracklib-format(8)					      Debian GNU/Linux manual						cracklib-format(8)

NAME

       cracklib-format, cracklib-packer, cracklib-unpacker - cracklib dictionary utilities

SYNOPSIS

       cracklib-format file ...

       cracklib-packer cracklib_dictpath

       cracklib-unpacker cracklib_dictpath

DESCRIPTION

       cracklib-format	takes a list of text files each containing a list of words, one per line, It lowercases all words, removes control charac-
       ters, and sorts the lists.  It outputs the cleaned up list to standard output.  The text files may be optionally compressed with gzip(1).

       If you supply massive amounts of text to cracklib-format you must have enough free space available for use by the sort(1) command.  If  you
       do not have 20Mb free in /var/tmp (or whatever temporary area your sort(1) command uses), have a look at the /usr/sbin/cracklib-format pro-
       gram which is a sh(1) program.  You can usually tweak the sort(1) command to use any large area of disk	you  desire,  by  use  of  the	-T
       option.	cracklib-format has a hook for this.

       cracklib-packer	reads  from  standard input a list of sorted and cleaned words and creates a database in the directory and prefix given by
       the command line argument cracklib_dictpath.  Three files are created with the suffixes of .hwm, .pwd, and .pwi.  These three files are	in
       the  format  that  the  FascistCheck(3) subroutine, cracklib-unpacker(8), and cracklib-check(8), utilities understand.  The number of words
       read and written are printed on stdout(3).

       cracklib-unpacker reads from the database in the directory and prefix given by the command line argument cracklib_dictpath and  outputs	on
       standard output the list of words that make up the database.

       The  database  is in a binary format generated by the utilities cracklib-format(8) and cracklib-packer(8).  On a Debian system the database
       is located in the directory /var/cache/cracklib/cracklib_dict and is generated daily with the program /etc/cron.daily/cracklib.	The  loca-
       tion  is  also  defined	in  the  header  file  crack.h using the constant CRACKLIB_DICTPATH though none of the subroutines in the cracklib
       libraries have this location hardcoded into their implementations.

FILES

       /var/cache/cracklib/cracklib_dict.[hwm|pwd|pwi]
	      cracklib dictionary database files used by utilities.

       /etc/cron.daily/cracklib
	      cracklib daily cron program to rebuild the cracklib dictionary database.

       /etc/cracklib/cracklib.conf
	      cracklib configuration file used by the cracklib daily cron program to rebuild the cracklib dictionary database.

       /usr/include/crack.h
	      cracklib header file defining the subroutine FascistCheck(3) and the constant CRACKLIB_DICTPATH used to compile in the  location	of
	      the cracklib dictionary database for these utilities.

       /usr/sbin/cracklib-format
	      cracklib shell script to create initial list of words for dictionary database.

SEE ALSO

       FascistCheck(3), cracklib-check(8), update-cracklib(8), create-cracklib-dict(8)
       /usr/share/doc/libcrack2/libcrack2.html
       /usr/share/doc/cracklib-runtime/cracklib-runtime.html

AUTHOR

       cracklib2 is written by Alec Muffett <alecm@crypto.dircon.co.uk>. Manual added by Jean Pierre LeJacq <jplejacq@quoininc.com>.

2.7-8.5 						   Sat Jun 21 22:43:12 CEST 2008					cracklib-format(8)