man.bsd.lv manual page server

DESCRIPTION

The new password should be at least six characters long and not purely alphabetic. Its total length must be less than _PASSWORD_LEN (currently 128 characters). Numbers, upper case letters and meta characters are encouraged.

All options may not be available on all systems.

-d database

This option specifies the password database that should be updated. The following databases are supported:

files

This specifies that the password change should be applied to the local password file. When changing only the local password, passwd uses pwd_mkdb(8) to update the password databases.

nis

This specifies that the password change should be applied to the NIS password database. The rpc.yppasswdd(8) daemon should be running on the master NIS server.

krb5

This specifies that the user's Kerberos 5 password should be changed. The host must be configured to use Kerberos. See krb5.conf(5).

-l

This is the equivalent of -d files.

-y

This is the equivalent of -d nis.

-k

This is the equivalent of -d krb5.

If a password database is not specified, passwd will change the password database as determined by the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) library.

The type of cipher used to encrypt the password depends on the configuration in passwd.conf(5). It can be different for local and NIS passwords.