[plug] Password Composition

[Mike Holland]

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Earnshaw, Mike wrote:

> When I changed a users password to the one they selected I received a "BAD
> PASSWORD: Too short" message, but it appeared to accept the password at the
> second typing.

Were you root? Its only a warning in that case. Root is assumed to know
what he'd doing :) Othwerwise it shouldnt accept the bad password.

> My question is can the "check" of whether a password is bad or not be
> modified in some way? For example to force alternate upper/lower case and a
> mixture of numerals and alpha.

from the passwd man page:
       For  more  complete  information  on how to configure this
       application  with  Linux-PAM,  see  the  Linux-PAM  System
       Administrators' Guide at
       <http://parc.power.net/morgan/Linux-PAM/index.html>
 
> Also, but not related to this immediate question, I once tried to select a
> root password with !@#$%^&*() characters within it. The system appeared to
> accept it, but would not allow me to log in. When I later read the man page
> for "passwd" a "!" is used to disable a password, so maybe that was my
> error? but are the other characters valid for a password?

No, the password is encrypted, so any bad char's (like : or #) wouldnt
appear in the passwd file. (You didnt edit it by hand did you?)


Mike Holland  <mike at golden.wattle.id.au>
                          --==--
"A dirty mind is a joy forever."
-- Randy Kunkee