2 .\" Public Domain 1995 Rickard E. Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
3 .TH MCOOKIE 1 "25 September 1995" "" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
5 mcookie \- generate magic cookies for xauth
13 generates a 128-bit random hexadecimal number for use with the X authority
14 system. Typical usage:
16 xauth add :0 . `mcookie`
19 The "random" number generated is actually the output of the MD5 message
20 digest fed with various pieces of random information: the current time, the
21 process id, the parent process id, the contents of an input file (if
23 is specified), and several bytes of information from the first of the
24 following devices which is present:
31 The entropy in the generated 128-bit is probably quite small (and,
32 therefore, vulnerable to attack) unless a non-pseudorandom number generator
37 It is assumed that none of the devices opened will block.
53 The mcookie command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from
54 ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/.