When setting up a new Ubuntu 14 PC for a Standard User using a local System Admin account, I’ve used the following command in order to make their password expire after 30 days:
sudo chage –M 30 [username]
However, upon expiry you can’t seem to change it from the login screen. Whatever you enter, no matter how strong or random, results in incorrect password or password not strong enough errors. The only way round it is to log on as System Admin and change the password there.
Does anyone know how to make it work for the Standard User from the login screen, so the System Admin doesn’t need to get involved?
I've noticed that there is a bug documented here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-control-center/+bug/1318199 which seems to focus on the password not being strong enough and that the GUI works differently to a shell using passwd
. However, when the password expires I don't see a strength meter so not sure whether it's related.
The version I'm installing is Ubuntu 14.04 with all the latest updates.
Thanks in advance,
Adam.
Best Answer
In the Bugreport that you linked, there is one comment that explained why some people could not login at all (maybe similar to your problem). The solution for that is to install cracklib-runtime with the default cracklib dictionary of /usr/share/dict/cracklib-small. According to that guy, libpam-pwquality depends on it but it is not listed as a dependency, which causes the check whether a password is strong enough to always fail.