http://www.openwall.com/john/

You run "john" against a traditional passwd file, like "john /etc/passwd",
but since people now use shadow files, you have to join the authent files
and run john against that file.

No docs or HOWTOs online.  Pretty much the only docs are the text files in
the single doc subdirectory of the distribution.  First off, README.

Shadow passwords are the only intricacy.  See my wrapper script "johnny".
It generates a traditional passwd file from current host's system
authentication files and runs john on it with default modes (single
then password.lst (as wordlist) then incremental.

The writers of john use the crazy convention that ~ does not mean $HOME!, 
but means either $PWD (according to docs) or where "john" binary lives
(I think the latter is true).

After you build, the only useful stuff from the dist are the subdirectories
"doc" and "run".  I move the directory "run" to "john" wherever you want to
execute the binaries from.

DURING JOHN RUN hit any key for status, Ctrl-C to quit (you may continue
later).

Can easily continue an aborted run with "john -restore".


By default does "-single" then "-w:password.list" (the list file depends on
your ~/john.ini file) then "-i".
This is a good default since the first 2 take only a few seconds.