opendarwin man page for passwd

PASSWD(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						 PASSWD(1)

NAME
     passwd -- modify a user's password

SYNOPSIS
     passwd [-i infosystem] [-l location] [name]

DESCRIPTION
     Passwd changes the user's password.  First, the user is prompted for their current password.  If the current password is correctly typed, a
     new password is requested.  The new password must be entered twice to avoid typing errors.

     The new password should be at least six characters long and not purely alphabetic.  Its total length should be less than _PASSWORD_LEN (cur-
     rently 128 characters) although some infosystems allow longer passwords.  Numbers, upper case letters and meta characters are encouraged.

     Once the password has been verified, passwd communicates the new password information to the authenticating host.

     -i infosystem
	   This option specifies where the password update should be applied.  Under Mac OS X 10.3, supported infosystems are:

	   netinfo
		 (default) The netinfo database containing the user's password.  If no -l option is specified, the local netinfo database is
		 assumed.

	   file  The local flat-files (included for legacy configurations).

	   nis	 A remote NIS server containing the user's password.

	   opendirectory
		 A system conforming to opendirectory APIs and supporting updates (including LDAP, netinfo, etc).

     -l location
	   This option causes the password to be updated in the given location of the choosen infosystem.  When changing only the local password,
	   pwd_mkdb(8) is used to update the password databases.

	   for netinfo,
		 location may be a domain name or server/tag

	   for file,
		 location may be a file name (/etc/master.passwd is the default)

	   for nis,
		 location may be a NIS domainname

	   for opendirectory,
		 location may be a directory node name

	   The super-user privilages are not required change a user's current password if only the local password is modified.

FILES
     /etc/master.passwd  The user database
     /etc/passwd	 A Version 7 format password file
     /etc/passwd.XXXXXX  Temporary copy of the password file

SEE ALSO
     chpass(1), login(1), passwd(5), pwd_mkdb(8), vipw(8,) nicl(1)

     Robert Morris and Ken Thompson, UNIX password security.

HISTORY
     A passwd command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.

4th Berkeley Distribution					   June 6, 1993 					 4th Berkeley Distribution