Put this little script into you ~/.bashrc and you can run it from anywhere: genpasswd() { local l=$1 [ "$l" == "" ] && l=20 tr -dc A-Za-z0-9_ < /dev/urandom | head -c ${l} | xargs } It takes one parameter which says how long a password you want: tdd@s10e-tdd:~$ genpasswd 10 EpVrnblbz_ tdd@s10e-tdd:~$ ---- Source: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-unix-bsd-openssh-server-best-practices.html