UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I would like to set my minimum password length to on Linux and AIX.

However, doing this normally would only make it so newly added users will be affected by this. I would like for when I make this change, it either truncates everyone elses password, or prompts them to change it to 8+ characters.


Is this possible?????

If you want to make sure that all users have 8 caracters password after the change, you may need to force the change:

Linux
passwd -f

Code:

# passwd -f username

AIX
pwdadm - f

Code:

# pwdadm -f ADMCHG username

I would make sure you have some people to take support calls when you do so...unless you don’t have many users.

By using the passwd -f (username) command- .this will enfore a new password on the first login attempt. This works was wandering if their was a way to incorporate this into the user account creation. To be a little clearer- when the administrator is creating a new account- unix will ask for the new password - is their any script that can be run that once the temporary password has been entered twice- unix will automatically run the passwd -f (username) command and hence save the administrator time from manually using this command.