forcing a password change in terminal

Question

Level 1

110 points

forcing a password change in terminal

I have SSH access via windows mobile and pocketPuTTY and a lot of support requests are for forgotten passwords.

Is there a simple command after using passwd username to change the password that will force a password change on the next login?

I looked at chage -d 0 username but it does not seem to work on OSX

Is there an alternative or flag for passwd that can achieve this?

X-Serve 1.33Ghz - OSXS 10.4.8, Mac OS X (10.4.8), 11 Intel iMacs, 22 eMacs, 26 XP Boxes

Posted on Jan 5, 2007 7:32 AM

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Answer 1

R.Cerny

Level 4

1,170 points

Jan 5, 2007 8:12 AM in response to PsyMan

man pwpolicy

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Answer 2

PsyMan Author

Level 1

110 points

Jan 5, 2007 9:55 AM in response to R.Cerny

that looked very hopefull until I actually tried to impliment it, am I doing something wrong here? I tried logging into the server as root and issuing the following command.

pwpolicy -u astudent newPasswordRequired

It did not present any errors but when I log in as astudent it does not ask me to change my password.

I also tried

pwpolicy -u astudent -p newpassword

And that did not change the password either. passwd astudent however allows me to change it.

Do I need to specify the LDAP information as well as it seemed to be the answer to my problem but does not seem to work.

Thanks, I am sure I will get there in the end

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Answer 3

R.Cerny

Level 4

1,170 points

Jan 5, 2007 10:12 AM in response to PsyMan

Did you read the man page? Check the examples part

pwpolicy -a authenticator -u user -setpassword newpassword

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Answer 4

MacLemon

Level 2

455 points

Jan 5, 2007 3:16 PM in response to R.Cerny

OT: Try social engineering as well. Make 'em insert a buck into the piggy-bank each time you need to reset a password. 🙂

Have them use the password more often! (Eg: Turn off autologin.)
Regards
MacLemon

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