password-maintenance.md

Password Maintenance

Category: Linux

You can change the password for a user account with the passwd command. Root users or accounts with sudo privileges can change passwords for other users. Regular users can only change their own password.

When using passwd you will be prompted to enter the current password, then the new password twice at the command line. Passwords are not shown on the screen when changing them.

Change your password

Change your password with the following command:

passwd

Change another user password

As a super-user, change the password for another user (in this example randomusername) with the following command:

sudo passwd accountname

Force a user to change their password at next login

By default, passwords on Linux do not expire. You can force a user to change their password when they next login with the following command:

sudo passwd --expire accountname

Note: Encrypted user passwords on Linux are stored in /etc/shadow