change password policy

sunhui · 08-11-2006, 12:25 AM

now my system accept the numerics only or characters only password , for example , the password can be 741852 ( all numerics ) or poiuyt ( all characters ) , if I want to control the password MUST have BOTH characters AND numerics , what can I do ? thx

MasterOfTheWind · 08-11-2006, 10:19 AM

Hmmm... The only thing I could think of is making a script which checks the input string (password) first and if it is suitable (compared to a set of given conditions) change the password. I cannot give you any source code, sorry - my knowledge of BASH (or any other scripting language for that matter) is awful

But I doubt that this is an optimal solution to your problem. I also doubt that it is a secure one, but it can of course be implemented as a temporary hack

timmeke · 08-11-2006, 10:40 AM

Rather than writing a wrapper script yourself, try changing the PAM configuration files instead.
A quick google search turned up that pam_cracklib.so and/or pam_passwd+.so may help you.

Use them in /etc/pam.d/system-auth, as "password" directives (first word on the line says "password").