Description¶

systemd-ask-password may be used to query a system password or passphrase from the user, using a question message specified on the command line. When run from a TTY it will query a password on the TTY and print it to standard output. When run with no TTY or with --no-tty it will query the password system-wide and allow active users to respond via several agents. The latter is only available to privileged processes.

The purpose of this tool is to query system-wide passwords -- that is passwords not attached to a specific user account. Examples include: unlocking encrypted hard disks when they are plugged in or at boot, entering an SSL certificate passphrase for web and VPN servers.

Existing agents are: a boot-time password agent asking the user for passwords using Plymouth; a boot-time password agent querying the user directly on the console; an agent requesting password input via a wall(1) message; an agent suitable for running in a GNOME session; a command line agent which can be started temporarily to process queued password requests; a TTY agent that is temporarily spawned during systemctl(1) invocations.

Additional password agents may be implemented according to the systemd Password Agent Specification.

If a password is queried on a TTY, the user may press TAB to hide the asterisks normally shown for each character typed. Pressing Backspace as first key achieves the same effect.

Options¶

The following options are understood:

Exit status¶

On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.

See Also¶

systemd(1), systemctl(1), plymouth(8), wall(1)