<!–texy–>Hi ainande,

use
echo username:password | chpasswd -S -c MD5
If supports both MD5 and SHA512 (besides others). Salt is generated randomly.

To generate MD5 password only (without having to give the username) you can use
openssl passwd -1 -salt xyz
In this case, you choose the salt.

<!–texy–>Hi there

Thanks for this entry, it is well explained and understandable.
Yet I still got a question (which hasn't really something to do with the algorithm, but anyway you may have an idea)..
I'm wondering whether it's possible to reset the passphrase – I may have changed it or just forgot it, and now I wonder if I could maybe encrypt a string (new password) with the right algorithm and then replace the hash of the old password in a specific file (I still can start up my system n all that..)

Greets