Setting or Changing a Password

From a command line shell prompt, y ou can use the passwd command directly to set or c hange a passw ord. (You do not have to be root). Enter the following:

3passwd 4Return5

You will be prompted for y our old password. Then you will be prompted to enter and re-enter your new passw ord. The re-entered password must match the ￿rst entry.

See the later section in this c hapter, \Selecting a New P assword", if you need help with selecting passw ords. Use the same procedure to c hange an old password as to add a new passw ord. If you already have one, you will be prompted appropriately for the old passw ord.

Selecting a New Password

If you have already booted and used y our system, y ou should already ha ve set di￿erent passwords for your user account and for root.

However, you will also want to change your password from time to time as a matter of good securit y practice. The follo wing gives the general requiremen ts of setting passw ords.

A password must meet four criteria to be v alid:

Contain at least six c haracters.

At least two characters must be alphabetic.

At least one character must be a number (0-9) or a special c haracter (/, ?, !, or other punctuation mark).

Di￿er from your previous passw ord by at least three characters.

Your password is case-sensitiv e, so the passw ord ?Secret is di￿erent from the password ?secret . Your password can also be as long as y ou want, but only the ￿rst eight characters are checked.

If you are adding many users to y our system, see System Administration Tasks for the details of con trolling access to y our system.

If you have not yet set your password, you can do so using SAM or a shell command line.

3-10 Logging In and Getting Started

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