Does anyone know a good link that explains how to setup jtr to use multiple cores?  I found some links but they were a few years old.  Considering I have the latest version (1.7.9) I just wanted to make sure I didn't break jtr by using info for an older version.  Multiple cores are nice, but if I break it, 0 cores are bad

I'm running backtrack 5 r1 x64.

I tried using hashcat, and while it uses multiple cores and is very fast by default, it was only able to crack 1/3 hashes, whereas john was able to crack all 3 using the --rules option with its default rules.  So if anyone knows a good rules file for hashcat (and maybe a tutorial), that would be useful as well.

Thanks.

I did a short write-up some time ago for JTR@Ubuntu 10.10 using a hexa-core cpu, see here.

Check also Adrian's Password Exploitation Class.

If I remember correctly, the /usr/bin/john file is actually just a softlink to the actual binary. You can install as many versions of John as you like and just point the softlink to the binary of the version you want.

awesome thread guys, this is information that I was interested in when I was taking the CPT, in the end hashcat worked for me, and when i looked up the instructions/advice on multicore cpu support, well i was confused to say the least. I'll have to look at this in depth at a later date/time.