mdp

mdp (Mot de Passe) is an open source software project designed as a wrapper around a text editor and the GnuPG free OpenPGP implementation. It is a small, low on resources, easy-to-use, easy-to-instll and very lightweight command-line program that allows you to generate passwords.

The project includes a full-screen page that has been engineered to avoid passwords from persisting on the screen. Additionally, the password generator component features profiles. It should not be confused with the mpd (music player daemon) project.

Getting started with mpd

To install the program in your computer, you must first download it and extract it on a location of your choice. Open a terminal emulator, navigate to the location of the extracted files and run the “./configure && make” install command, without quotes.

The above command will configure and compile the project in a matter of seconds. To install it system wide, use the “make install” command (without quotes) as root. Before using the program to generate passwords, you must configure it. A minimal setup consists of changing the GPG key, like this:

# GnuPG key id (default: none, let gpg pick a key)
set gpg_key_id "6453194A"

# Editor used in edit mode (ignore if you have $EDITOR configured)
set editor "/usr/bin/vim"

Extended customization examples can be found on the project’s homepage, from where you can download the latest version of the project as a universal sources archive, deployable on either 32-bit and 64-bit hardware platforms.

Under the hood

mpd is written entirely in the C programming language and supports any modern or old distribution of Linux. It can also be found on the default software repositories of several Linux distributions, but advanced users can clone the latest Git commit from its official GitHub page. The program is dubbed by its developer as “minimalist password safe.”

What is new in this release:

• With this release, mdp switches to git-style commands (e.g., mdp edit).
• It also adds support for "mdp add", which avoids the use of copy-paste on password creation.
• Password profiles now support Unicode characters and character aliases (e.g., $DIGITS, $ALPHANUMERIC).
• The "set password_file" configuration parameter has been added, allowing definition of multiple password repositories.
• A regex mode has been added to the prompt command (mdp prompt -E), and comments are now supported in the password file (using #).

What is new in version 0.6.0:

• This version added configurable profiles (-p) to the password generator (-g).
• A pager display bug on long lines was fixed.
• A bug where mdp was unable to properly detect a SIGINT sent to gpg was fixed.
• -l and -n parameters were added to force the length and number of passwords.
• A -k parameter was added to define the GnuPG key if missing from config.

What is new in version 0.2:

• This version fixes Linux compilation and file permissions.

Requirements:

• GnuPG