Password in History List

I logged on to a Solaris server as user oracle and was prompted to change its password. I was in a hurry so I tried to reuse the old password. This failed so I had to use a new one:

 

Password:

Warning: Your password has expired, please change it now.

 

New Password:

sshd-kbdint: Password in history list.

 

New Password:

Re-enter new Password:

sshd-kbdint: password successfully changed for oracle

 

We store our passwords in a spreadsheet which can only be accessed by certain people. A colleague had locked this and gone home so I could not update it with the new password. I tried to reinstate the old password from within the UNIX session but failed again for a different reason:

 

Solaris:oracle passwd

passwd: Changing password for oracle

Enter existing login password:

passwd: Sorry: less than 7 days since the last change.

Permission denied

Solaris:oracle

 

I logged on as root and this time I was able to reuse the old oracle user password:

 

Solaris:root passwd oracle

New Password:

Re-enter new Password:

passwd: password successfully changed for oracle

Solaris:root

How to Tell if a UNIX User is Locked

You can check if a UNIX user is locked with the passwd -s command, followed by the username. If the letters LK appear at the start of the output, after the username, the user is locked:

Solaris root user > passwd -s oracle
oracle    LK    06/15/12     7    56     7
Solaris root user >

You can unlock a user with the passwd -u command, followed by the username:

Solaris root user > passwd -u oracle
passwd: password information changed for oracle
Solaris root user>

After unlocking the user, the letters PS replace the letters LK in the output of the passwd -s command. This simply means that the user has a password:

Solaris root user > passwd -s oracle
oracle    PS    06/15/12     7    56     7
Solaris root user >

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