John the Ripper's command line syntax.

When invoked with no command line arguments, "john" prints its usage
summary.

The supported command line arguments are password file names and
options.  Many of the supported options accept additional arguments.

You can list any number of password files right on the command line of
"john".  You do not have to specify any options.  If valid password
files are specified but no options are given, John will go through
the default selection of cracking modes with their default settings.

Options may be specified along with password files or on their own,
although some require that password files be specified and some do not
support operation on password files.

All options are case sensitive, can be abbreviated as long as the
abbreviations are unambiguous, can be prefixed with two dashes
(GNU-style) or with one dash, and can use "=" or ":" to indicate an
argument (if supported for a given option).

The supported options are as follows, square brackets denote optional
arguments:

--single			"single crack" mode

Enables the "single crack" mode, using rules from the configuration
file section [List.Rules:Single].

--wordlist=FILE			wordlist mode, read words from FILE,
--stdin				or from stdin

These are used to enable the wordlist mode.

--rules				enable word mangling rules for wordlist mode

Enables word mangling rules that are read from [List.Rules:Wordlist].

--incremental[=MODE]		"incremental" mode [using section MODE]

Enables the "incremental" mode, using the specified configuration file
definition (section [Incremental:MODE], or [Incremental:All] by default
except for LM hashes for which the default is [Incremental:LanMan]).

--external=MODE			external mode or word filter

Enables an external mode, using external functions defined in section
[List.External:MODE].

--stdout[=LENGTH]		just output candidate passwords

When used with a cracking mode, except for "single crack", makes John
output the candidate passwords it generates to stdout instead of
actually trying them against password hashes; no password files may be
specified when this option is used.  If a LENGTH is given, John
assumes that to be the significant password length and only produces
passwords up to that length.

--restore[=NAME]		restore an interrupted session

Continues an interrupted cracking session, reading state information
from the specified session file or from $JOHN/john.rec by default.

--session=NAME			give a new session the NAME

This option can only be used when starting a new cracking session and
its purpose is to give the new session a name (to which John will
append the ".rec" suffix to form the session file name).  This is
useful for running multiple instances of John in parallel or to be
able to later recover a session other than the last one you interrupt.

--status[=NAME]			print status of a session [called NAME]

Prints status of an interrupted or running session.  Note that on a
Unix-like system, you can get a detached running session to update its
session file by sending a SIGHUP to the appropriate "john" process;
then use this option to read in and display the status.

--make-charset=FILE		make a charset, overwriting FILE

Generates a charset file based on character frequencies from
$JOHN/john.pot, for use with "incremental" mode.  The entire
$JOHN/john.pot will be used for the charset generation unless you
specify some password files in which case only the cracked passwords
which correspond to those password files will be used.  You can also
use an external filter() routine with this option.

--show				show cracked passwords

Shows the cracked passwords for given password files (which you must
specify).  You can use this option while another instance of John is
cracking to see what John did so far; to get the most up to date
information, first send a SIGHUP to the appropriate "john" process.

--test[=TIME]			run tests and benchmarks for TIME seconds each

Tests all of the compiled in hashing algorithms for proper operation and
benchmarks them.  The "--format" option can be used to restrict this to
a specific algorithm.

--users=[-]LOGIN|UID[,..]	[do not] load this (these) user(s)

Allows you to select just a few accounts for cracking or for other
operations.  A dash before the list can be used to invert the check
(that is, load information for all the accounts that are not listed).

--groups=[-]GID[,..]		load users [not] of this (these) group(s)

Tells John to load (or to not load) information for accounts in the
specified group(s) only.

--shells=[-]SHELL[,..]		load users with[out] this (these) shell(s)

This option is useful to load accounts with a valid shell only or to
not load accounts with a bad shell.  You can omit the path before a
shell name, so "--shells=csh" will match both "/bin/csh" and
"/usr/bin/csh", while "--shells=/bin/csh" will only match "/bin/csh".

--salts=[-]COUNT		load salts with[out] at least COUNT passwords

This is a feature which allows to achieve better performance in some
special cases.  For example, you can crack only some salts using
"--salts=2" faster and then crack the rest using "--salts=-2".  Total
cracking time will be about the same, but you will likely get some
passwords cracked earlier.

--format=NAME			force hash type NAME

Allows you to override the hash type detection.  Currently, valid
"format names" are DES, BSDI, MD5, BF, AFS, and LM.  You can use this
option when cracking or with "--test".  Note that John can't crack
hashes of different types at the same time.  If you happen to get a
password file that uses more than one hash type (for different
accounts), then you have to invoke John once for each hash type and
you need to use this option to make John crack hashes of types other
than the one it would autodetect by default.

--save-memory=LEVEL		enable memory saving, at LEVEL 1..3

You might need this option if you don't have enough memory or don't
want John to affect other processes too much.  Level 1 tells John to
not waste memory on login names; it is only supported when a cracking
mode other than "single crack" is explicitly requested.  The only
impact is that you won't see the login names while cracking.  Higher
memory saving levels have a performance impact; you should probably
avoid using them unless John doesn't work or gets into swap otherwise.


	Additional utilities.

There are some related utilities in John's run directory:

	unshadow PASSWORD-FILE SHADOW-FILE

Combines the "passwd" and "shadow" files (when you already have access
to both) for use with John.  You might need this since if you only
used your shadow file, the "Full Name" or "GECOS" information wouldn't
be used by the "single crack" mode (thus reducing its efficiency) and
you wouldn't be able to use the "--groups" and "--shells" options and
to select by UID with "--users".  You probably also want to see all of
the passwd file fields with "--show".

You'll usually want to redirect the output of "unshadow" to a file
which you then pass to John.

	unafs DATABASE-FILE CELL-NAME

Gets password hashes out of the binary AFS database and produces
output usable by John (you should redirect the output to a file).

	unique OUTPUT-FILE

Removes duplicates from a wordlist (read from stdin) without changing
the order of entries.  You might want to use this with John's
"--stdout" option if you've got a lot of disk space to trade for the
reduced cracking time (on possibly trying some duplicates as they
might be produced with word mangling rules).

	mailer PASSWORD-FILE

A shell script to send mail to all the users who got weak passwords.
You should edit the message inside the script before using it.

$Owl: Owl/packages/john/john/doc/OPTIONS,v 1.5 2009/09/09 04:50:14 solar Exp $