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PASSWD(1) User Commands PASSWD(1)

NOM

passwd - Modifier le mot de passe d'un utilisateur

SYNOPSIS

passwd [options] [LOGIN]

DESCRIPTION

The passwd command changes passwords for user accounts. A regular user can only change the password for their own account, while the superuser can change the password for any account. The passwd also changes the account or associated password validity period.

Modifications du mot de passe

If the account has a non-empty password, the user is first prompted to enter their current password. The entered password is encrypted and compared to the stored value. The user has only one attempt to enter the correct password. The superuser can bypass this step to allow changing forgotten passwords.

After the password has been entered, password aging information is checked to determine if the user is permitted to change the password at this time. If not, passwd refuses to change the password and exits.

The user is then prompted twice for a replacement password. The second entry is compared against the first and both are required to match for the password to be changed.

Then, the password is tested for complexity. passwd rejects passwords that do not meet the complexity requirements. Do not include the system default erase or kill characters.

Astuces pour les mots de passe

The security of a password depends on the strength of the encryption algorithm and the size of the key space. The legacy UNIX System encryption method is based on the NBS DES algorithm. More recent methods are now recommended (see ENCRYPT_METHOD). The size of the key space depends on the randomness of the selected password.

Compromises in password security normally result from careless password selection or handling. For this reason, you should not select a password which appears in a dictionary or one that must be written down. The password should also not be a proper name, your license number, birth date, or street address. Any of these may be used as guesses to violate system security.

As a general guideline, passwords should be long and random. It's fine to use simple character sets, such as passwords consisting only of lowercase letters, if that helps memorizing longer passwords. For a password consisting only of lowercase English letters randomly chosen, and a length of 32, there are 26^32 (approximately 2^150) different possible combinations. Being an exponential equation, it's apparent that the exponent (the length) is more important than the base (the size of the character set).

You can find advice on how to choose a strong password on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength

OPTIONS

The options which apply to the passwd command are:

-a, --all

This option can be used only with -S and causes show status for all users.

-d, --delete

Deletes a user's password, making it empty. This command sets the account to be passwordless.

-e, --expire

Annuler immédiatement la validité du mot de passe d'un compte. Ceci permet d'obliger un utilisateur à changer son mot de passe lors de sa prochaine connexion.

-h, --help

Afficher un message d'aide et quitter.

-i, --inactive INACTIVE

This option is used to disable an account after the password has been expired for a number of days. After a user account has had an expired password for INACTIVE days, the user may no longer sign on to the account.

-k, --keep-tokens

Indiquer que la modification de mot de passe ne sera effectuée que lors de l'expiration des jetons d'authentification (mots de passe). C'est utile dans le cas où l'utilisateur voudrait conserver ses jetons d'authentification encore valables.

-l, --lock

Verrouiller le mot de passe du compte indiqué. Cette option désactive un mot de passe en le modifiant par une valeur qui ne correspond pas à un mot de passe chiffré possible (cela ajoute un « ! » au début du mot de passe).

Note that this does not disable the account. The user may still be able to login using another authentication token (e.g. an SSH key). To disable the account, administrators should use usermod --expiredate 1 (this sets the account's expire date to 1970-01-02).

Les utilisateurs avec un mot de passe verrouillé ne sont pas autorisés à le changer.

-n, --mindays MIN_DAYS

Set the minimum number of days between password changes to MIN_DAYS. A value of zero for this field indicates that the user may change their password at any time.

-q, --quiet

Mode silencieux.

-r, --repository REPOSITORY

change password in REPOSITORY repository

-R, --root CHROOT_DIR

Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory. Only absolute paths are supported.

-P, --prefix PREFIX_DIR

Apply changes to configuration files under the root filesystem found under the directory PREFIX_DIR. This option does not chroot and is intended for preparing a cross-compilation target. Some limitations: NIS and LDAP users/groups are not verified. No PAM support. No SELINUX support.

-S, --status

Afficher l'état d'un compte. Cet état est constitué de 7 champs. Le premier champ est le nom du compte. Le second champ indique si le mot de passe est bloqué (L), n'a pas de mot de passe (NP) ou a un mot de passe utilisable (P). Le troisième champ donne la date de dernière modification du mot de passe. Les quatre champs suivants sont : la durée minimum avant modification, la durée maximum de validité, la durée d'avertissement, et la durée d'inactivité autorisée pour le mot de passe. Les durées sont exprimées en jours.

-u, --unlock

Unlock the password of the named account. This option re-enables a password by changing the password back to its previous value (to the value before using the -l option).

-w, --warndays WARN_DAYS

Set the number of days of warning before a password change is required. The WARN_DAYS option is the number of days prior to password expiration during which the user is warned that their password is about to expire.

-x, --maxdays MAX_DAYS

Set the maximum number of days a password remains valid. After MAX_DAYS, the password is required to be changed.

Passing the number -1 as MAX_DAYS will remove checking a password's validity.

-s, --stdin

This option is used to indicate that passwd should read the new password from standard input, which can be a pipe.

AVERTISSEMENTS

La vérification de la complexité des mots de passe peut varier d'un site à l'autre. Il est vivement conseillé aux utilisateurs de choisir un mot de passe aussi complexe que possible dans la limite de ce qu'il est capable de mémoriser.

Il se peut que les utilisateurs ne puissent pas changer leur mot de passe sur un système si NIS est activé et qu'ils ne sont pas connectés au serveur NIS.

passwd uses PAM to authenticate users and to change their passwords.

FICHIERS

/etc/passwd

Informations sur les comptes des utilisateurs.

/etc/shadow

Informations sécurisées sur les comptes utilisateurs.

/etc/pam.d/passwd

PAM configuration for passwd.

VALEURS DE RETOUR

The passwd command exits with the following values:

0

success

1

permission denied

2

invalid combination of options

3

unexpected failure, nothing done

4

unexpected failure, passwd file missing

5

passwd file busy, try again

6

invalid argument to option

10

an error was returned by pam(3)

VOIR AUSSI

chpasswd(8), makepasswd(1), passwd(5), shadow(5), usermod(8).

The following web page comically (yet correctly) compares the strength of two different methods for choosing a password: "https://xkcd.com/936/"

26/08/2025 shadow-utils 4.18.0