nispasswd(1)							   User Commands						      nispasswd(1)

NAME

       nispasswd - change NIS+ password information

SYNOPSIS

       nispasswd [-ghs] [-D domainname] [username]

       nispasswd -a

       nispasswd [-D domainname] [-d [username]]

       nispasswd [-l] [-f] [-n min] [-x max] [-w warn]
	    [-D domainname] username

DESCRIPTION

       The nispasswd utility changes a password,  gecos (finger) field (-g option),  home directory (-h option),  or login shell (-s option) asso-
       ciated with the username (invoker by default) in the NIS+ passwd table.

       Additionally, the command can be used to view or modify aging information associated with the user specified  if the invoker has the  right
       NIS+ privileges.

       nispasswd  uses	secure	RPC to communicate with the NIS+ server,  and therefore, never sends unencrypted passwords over  the communication
       medium.

       nispasswd does not read or modify the local password information stored in the /etc/passwd and  /etc/shadow files.

       When used to change a password, nispasswd prompts non-privileged users for their old password.  It then prompts for the new password  twice
       to forestall typing mistakes. When the old password is entered, nispasswd checks to see if it has "aged" sufficiently. If "aging" is insuf-
       ficient, nispasswd terminates; see getspnam(3C).

       The old password is used to decrypt the username's secret key. If the password does not decrypt the secret key,	nispasswd prompts for  the
       old  secure-RPC password.  It uses this password to decrypt the secret key. If this fails, it gives the user one more chance. The old pass-
       word is also used to ensure that the new password differs from the old by at least three characters. Assuming aging is sufficient, a  check
       is  made  to ensure that  the new password meets construction requirements described below. 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 twice. The new password is used to  re-encrypt the user's secret key. Hence, it also becomes their secure-RPC password. Therefore,
       the secure-RPC password is no longer a different password from the user's password.

       Passwords must be constructed to meet the following requirements:

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

	   o	  Each password must contain at least two alphabetic characters and at least one numeric  or  special  character.  In  this  case,
		  "alphabetic" refers to all upper or lower case letters.

	   o	  Each	password  must differ from the	user's login  username and any	reverse or circular shift of that login username. For com-
		  parison purposes, an upper case letter  and its corresponding lower case letter are equivalent.

	   o	  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.

       Network	administrators, who own the NIS+ password table, may change any password attributes  if they establish their credentials (see key-
       login(1)) before invoking  nispasswd. Hence, nispasswd does not prompt these privileged-users  for the old password and they are not forced
       to comply with password aging and password construction requirements.

       Any user may use the -d option to display password attributes for his or her own login name. The format of the display will be:

	 username status mm/dd/yy min max warn

       or, if password aging information is not present,

	 username status

       where

       username    The login ID of the user.

       status	   The	password  status  of  username:  "PS" stands for password exists or locked, "LK" stands for locked, and "NP" stands for no
		   password.

       mm/dd/yy    The date password was last changed for username. (Note that all password aging dates are determined using Greenwich	Mean  Time
		   (Universal Time) and, therefore, may differ by as much as a day in other time zones.)

       min	   The minimum number of days required between password changes for username.

       max	   The maximum number of days the password is valid for username.

       warn	   The number of days relative to max before the password expires that the username will be warned.

       The use of nispasswd is strongly discouraged. It is a wrapper around the passwd(1) command.

       Using  passwd(1)  with  the  -r	nisplus  option will achieve the same result and will be consistent across all the different name services
       available. This is the recommended way to change the password in NIS+.

       The login program, file access display programs (for example, ls -l), and network  programs  that  require  user  passwords,  for  example,
       rlogin(1),  ftp(1),  and so on, use the standard  getpwnam(3C) and getspnam(3C) interfaces to get password information. These programs will
       get the NIS+ password information, which is modified by nispasswd, only if the  passwd: entry in the  /etc/nsswitch.conf file includes nis-
       plus. See nsswitch.conf(4) for more details.

OPTIONS

       The following options are supported:

       -a		Shows  the  password  attributes  for  all  entries. This will show only the entries in the NIS+ passwd table in the local
			domain that the invoker is authorized to "read".

       -d [username]	Displays password attributes for the caller or the user specified if the invoker has the right privileges.

       -D domainname	Consults the passwd.org_dir table in domainname. If this option is not	specified,  the  default  domainname  returned	by
			nis_local_directory() will be used. This domainname is the same as that returned by  domainname(1M).

       -f		Forces the user to change password at the next login  by expiring the password for username.

       -g		Changes the gecos (finger) information.

       -h		Changes the home directory.

       -l		Locks the password entry for username. Subsequently,  login(1) would disallow logins with this NIS+ password entry.

       -n min		Sets minimum field for username. The min field contains the minimum number of days  between password changes for username.
			If min is greater than max, the user may not change the password. Always use this option with the -x option, unless max is
			set  to -1 (aging turned off).	In that case, min need not be set.

       -s		Changes the login shell. By default, only the NIS+ administrator can change the login shell. The user will be prompted for
			the new login shell.

       -w warn		Sets warn field for username. The warn field contains the number of days before the password expires that the user will be
			warned whenever he or she attempts to login.

       -x max		Sets  maximum  field for username. The max field contains the number of days that  the password is valid for username. The
			aging for username will be turned off immediately  if max is set to -1.  If it is set to 0, then the  user  is	forced	to
			change the password  at the next login session and aging is turned off.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values are returned:

       0     Success.

       1     Permission denied.

       2     Invalid combination of options.

       3     Unexpected failure. NIS+ passwd table unchanged.

       4     NIS+ passwd table missing.

       5     NIS+ is busy. Try again later.

       6     Invalid argument to option.

       7     Aging is disabled.

       8     No memory.

       9     System error.

       10    Account expired.

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWnisu			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       keylogin(1),   login(1),   NIS+(1),   nistbladm(1),   passwd(1),  rlogin(1),  domainname(1M),  nisserver(1M),  getpwnam(3C),  getspnam(3C),
       nis_local_directory(3NSL), nsswitch.conf(4), passwd(4), shadow(4), attributes(5)

NOTES

       NIS+ might not be supported in future releases of the Solaris operating system. Tools to aid the migration from NIS+ to LDAP are  available
       in the current Solaris release. For more information, visit http://www.sun.com/directory/nisplus/transition.html.

SunOS 5.11							    2 Dec 2005							      nispasswd(1)