PASSWD(1) BSD General Commands Manual PASSWD(1)NAMEpasswd — modify a user's password
SYNOPSISpasswd [-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 pass‐
word. If no -l option is specified, the local netinfo data‐
base 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 ALSOchpass(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
