NAME

passwd − change login password

SYNOPSIS

passwd [ name ]

HP-UX COMPATIBILITY

Level: HP-UX/STANDARD

Origin: System V

Native Language Support:
8−bit passwords.

Remarks: Not supported on the Integral Personal Computer. 

DESCRIPTION

This command changes or installs a password associated with the login name. If name is omitted, it defaults to getlogin(3) name.

Ordinary users may change only the password which corresponds to their login name.

Passwd prompts ordinary users for their old password, if any.  It then prompts for the new password twice.  The first time the new password is entered passwd checks to see if the old password has “aged” sufficiently.  If “aging” is insufficient the new password is rejected and passwd terminates;  see passwd(4).

Assuming “aging” is sufficient, a check is made to insure that the new password meets construction requirements.  When the new password is entered a second time the two copies of the new password are compared.  If the two copies are not identical the cycle of prompting for the new password is repeated for at most two more times. 

Passwords must be constructed to meet the following requirements:

Each password must have at least six characters. Only the first eight characters are significant.

Each password must contain at least two alphabetic characters and at least one numeric or special character.  In this case, “alphabetic” means upper and lower case letters. 

Each password must differ from the user’s login name and any reverse or circular shift of that login name. For comparison purposes, an upper case letter and its corresponding lower case letter are equivalent.

New passwords must differ from the old by at least three characters.  For comparison purposes, an upper case letter and its corresponding lower case letter are equivalent. 

One whose effective user ID is zero is called a super-user; see id(1), and su(1). Super-users may change any password; hence, passwd does not prompt super-users for the old password.  Super-users are not forced to comply with password aging and password construction requirements.  A super-user can create a null password by entering a carriage return in response to the prompt for a new password. 

FILES

/etc/passwd

SEE ALSO

login(1), id(1), su(1), crypt(3C), passwd(5). 

DIAGNOSTICS

Permission denied. 
name is not in password file, or you are not user name or the super-user. 

Sorry. 
the old password does not match.

Sorry: <x weeks since the last change
password aging is in effect, and it is too soon to change yours.

You may not change this password
the super-user has made it impossible to change your password.

Too short
passwords must be at least 4 characters long.

Please use at least one non-numeric character
your new password does not utilize a sufficiently varied selection of characters.  You can override this rule by re-entering your new password 2 more times.

Please use a longer password. 
your new password is not long enough to be sufficiently secure.  You can override this rule by re-entering your new password 2 more times.

They don’t match, try again. 
the two entries of your new password are not identical.

Temporary file busy; try again later
only one user can change his password at a time.

Cannot create temporary file
see the super-user.

Cannot unlink ’filename’
see the super-user.

cannot link ’file’ to ’file’. 
see the super-user.

cannot recover ’file’. 
see the super-user.

Password unchanged. 
the new and old passwords are the same.

Hewlett-Packard  —  last mod. May 11, 2021