# new password generating lookup plugin -- neat! **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [March 11, 2013, 2:06am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/new-password-generating-lookup-plugin-neat/12478 "2013-03-11T02:06:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2013, 2:06am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/new-password-generating-lookup-plugin-neat/12478/1 "2013-03-11T02:06:03Z")
Forgot to mention this cool trick recently added by Javie Candeira: [https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/runner/lookup\_plugins/password.py](https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/runner/lookup_plugins/password.py) This is a lookup plugin that you can use inside variables to generate and store passwords for you. If doing this, be sure you guard permissions on the storage directory closely, and it obviously requires that you run ansible from the same machine (or otherwise share the storage directory) Usage for a 30 character password that is unique per host might look like this: vars:    foo\_password: $PASSWORD(/opt/storage/${ansible\_hostname}/foo\_password,30) Or just like this in a more simpler form: vars:    foo\_password: $PASSWORD(/opt/storage/foo\_password) The ",30" is optional -- leaving it off uses a default length. You can use other variables that expand "late" in the storage path to make the passwords vary by any fact you choose, or you can not use any variables to set a password that is always the same. So, basically, anywhere you want, you can use ${foo\_password} and it would be set to a generated password that would not change, unless you wanted to go and change it. I think this is a pretty neat trick. It only does the one storage medium right now (disk), though once the ansible-commander project is further along we might tweak it also pull from a DB or something. We'll see! --Michael