The
passwd
command changes passwords for user accounts. A normal user may only change the password for his/her own account, while the superuser may change the password for any account.
passwd
also changes the account or associated password validity period.
Password Changes
The user is first prompted for his/her old password, if one is present. This password is then encrypted and compared against the stored password. The user has only one chance to enter the correct password. The superuser is permitted to bypass this step so that forgotten passwords may be changed.
After the password has been entered, password aging information is checked to see if the user is permitted to change the password at this time. If not,
passwd
refuses to change the password and exits.
The user is then prompted twice for a replacement password. The second entry is compared against the first and both are required to match in order for the password to be changed.
Then, the password is tested for complexity. As a general guideline, passwords should consist of 6 to 8 characters including one or more characters from each of the following sets:
-
•
lower case alphabetics
-
•
digits 0 thru 9
-
•
punctuation marks
Care must be taken not to include the system default erase or kill characters.
passwd
will reject any password which is not suitably complex.
Hints for user passwords
The security of a password depends upon the strength of the encryption algorithm and the size of the key space. The legacy
UNIX
System encryption method is based on the NBS DES algorithm. More recent methods are now recommended (see
ENCRYPT_METHOD). The size of the key space depends upon the randomness of the password which is selected.
Compromises in password security normally result from careless password selection or handling. For this reason, you should not select a password which appears in a dictionary or which must be written down. The password should also not be a proper name, your license number, birth date, or street address. Any of these may be used as guesses to violate system security.
You can find advices on how to choose a strong password on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength
OPTIONS
The options which apply to the
passwd
command are:
-a, --all
-
This option can be used only with
-S
and causes show status for all users.
-d, --delete
-
Delete a user's password (make it empty). This is a quick way to disable a password for an account. It will set the named account passwordless.
-e, --expire
-
Immediately expire an account's password. This in effect can force a user to change his/her password at the user's next login.
-h, --help
-
Display help message and exit.
-i, --inactive INACTIVE
-
This option is used to disable an account after the password has been expired for a number of days. After a user account has had an expired password for
INACTIVE
days, the user may no longer sign on to the account.
-k, --keep-tokens
-
Indicate password change should be performed only for expired authentication tokens (passwords). The user wishes to keep their non-expired tokens as before.
-l, --lock
-
Lock the password of the named account. This option disables a password by changing it to a value which matches no possible encrypted value (it adds a ´!´ at the beginning of the password).
Note that this does not disable the account. The user may still be able to login using another authentication token (e.g. an SSH key). To disable the account, administrators should use
usermod --expiredate 1
(this set the account's expire date to Jan 2, 1970).
Users with a locked password are not allowed to change their password.
-n, --mindays MIN_DAYS
-
Set the minimum number of days between password changes to
MIN_DAYS. A value of zero for this field indicates that the user may change his/her password at any time.
-q, --quiet
-
Quiet mode.
-r, --repository REPOSITORY
-
change password in
REPOSITORY
repository
-S, --status
-
Display account status information. The status information consists of 7 fields. The first field is the user's login name. The second field indicates if the user account has a locked password (L), has no password (NP), or has a usable password (P). The third field gives the date of the last password change. The next four fields are the minimum age, maximum age, warning period, and inactivity period for the password. These ages are expressed in days.
-u, --unlock
-
Unlock the password of the named account. This option re-enables a password by changing the password back to its previous value (to the value before using the
-l
option).
-w, --warndays WARN_DAYS
-
Set the number of days of warning before a password change is required. The
WARN_DAYS
option is the number of days prior to the password expiring that a user will be warned that his/her password is about to expire.
-x, --maxdays MAX_DAYS
-
Set the maximum number of days a password remains valid. After
MAX_DAYS, the password is required to be changed.
CAVEATS
Password complexity checking may vary from site to site. The user is urged to select a password as complex as he or she feels comfortable with.
Users may not be able to change their password on a system if NIS is enabled and they are not logged into the NIS server.
passwd
uses PAM to authenticate users and to change their passwords.
FILES
/etc/passwd
-
User account information.
/etc/shadow
-
Secure user account information.
/etc/pam.d/passwd
-
PAM configuration for
passwd.
EXIT VALUES
The
passwd
command exits with the following values:
0
-
success
1
-
permission denied
2
-
invalid combination of options
3
-
unexpected failure, nothing done
4
-
unexpected failure,
passwd
file missing
5
-
passwd
file busy, try again
6
-
invalid argument to option
SEE ALSO
passwd(5),
shadow(5),
usermod(8).
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- Password Changes
-
- Hints for user passwords
-
- OPTIONS
-
- CAVEATS
-
- FILES
-
- EXIT VALUES
-
- SEE ALSO
-
This document was created by
man2html,
using the manual pages.
Time: 19:49:13 GMT, April 27, 2011