NAME

       hashalot - read a passphrase and print a hash

SYNOPSIS

       hashalot [ -s SALT ] [ -x ] [ -n #BYTES ] [ -q ] [ HASHTYPE ]
       HASHTYPE [ -s SALT ] [ -x ] [ -n #BYTES ] [ -q ]

DESCRIPTION

       hashalot  is a small tool that reads a passphrase from standard input, hashes it using the
       given hash type, and prints the result to standard output.

       Warning: If you do not use the -x option, the hash is printed in binary.  This  may  wedge
       your terminal settings, or even force you to log out.

       This  is not a general purpose hasher, only the first line is used, not even including the
       final newline.  Thus, don't be surprised if the output seems to be  different  from  other
       tools -- you'd have to hash exactly the same string.

       Supported values for HASHTYPE:
               ripemd160 rmd160 rmd160compat sha256 sha384 sha512

OPTIONS

       The  option  -s SALT specifies an initialization vector to the hashing algorithm. You need
       this if you want to prevent identical passwords to map to identical  hashes,  which  is  a
       security risk.

       If the -x option is given then the hash will be printed as a string of hexadecimal digits.

       The  -n  option can be used to limit (or increase) the number of bytes output. The default
       is as appropriate for the specified hash algorithm: 20 bytes for RIPEMD160, 32  bytes  for
       SHA256,  etc.  The default for the "rmd160compat" hash is 16 bytes, for compatibility with
       the old kerneli.org utilities.

       The -q option causes hashalot to be more quiet and not print some warnings  which  may  be
       superfluous.

AUTHOR

       Ben Slusky <sluskyb@paranoiacs.org>

       This manual page was written by Matthias Urlichs <smurf@debian.org>.

                                           09 Feb 2004                                HASHALOT(1)