Linux set user passwords

How do I change a user password in Ubuntu Linux?

W e recently switched from Windows server operating system to Ubuntu Linux operating system at work. I am a developer by profession and do not know much about Linux. I need to change the sftp/ssh user account password on Ubuntu. How do I change a user password in Ubuntu Linux?

Introduction – Your Ubuntu Linux account information stored in a file named /etc/passwd and encrypted password in /etc/shadow . This page explains to you how to change the Ubuntu Linux root and user account password using the passwd command line.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	Yes
Requirements	Ubuntu Linux
Est. reading time	2 minutes

How to change a user password in Ubuntu

1. Open the terminal application by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T
2. To change a password for user named tom in Ubuntu, type:
   sudo passwd tom
3. To change a password for root user on Ubuntu Linux, run:
   sudo passwd root
4. And to change your own password for Ubuntu, execute:
   passwd

How to change a root (superuser) password in Ubuntu

Firstly, open a terminal window. If you want to change the password for remote Ubuntu server, log in using the ssh command:
ssh user@ubuntu-server-ip
ssh vivek@ubuntu-webserver-1
Type ‘sudo -i’ at the command prompt, and Enter key:
sudo -i
Type the current user password and press Enter key. Finally type NA command and press Enter to change password for root user:
passwd

Change password for root user on Ubuntu

How do I change the user account password on Ubuntu?

Again open a terminal window. Type the following command to change the password for regular Ubuntu user account named jerry:
sudo passwd < userNameHere >
sudo passwd jerry ## ##
sudo passwd vivek ## ##

How to change the user Password in Ubuntu Linux

Deleting a user password

Users will not be able to log in when the password is deleted or expired on Ubuntu Linux.

• No ads and tracking
• In-depth guides for developers and sysadmins at Opensourceflare✨
• Join my Patreon to support independent content creators and start reading latest guides:
  • How to set up Redis sentinel cluster on Ubuntu or Debian Linux
  • How To Set Up SSH Keys With YubiKey as two-factor authentication (U2F/FIDO2)
  • How to set up Mariadb Galera cluster on Ubuntu or Debian Linux
  • A podman tutorial for beginners – part I (run Linux containers without Docker and in daemonless mode)
  • How to protect Linux against rogue USB devices using USBGuard

Join Patreon ➔

The syntax is as follow to remove the password for the account called tom:
sudo passwd -d tom
## OR ##
sudo passwd —delete jerry
You will see confirmation on screen as follows:

To set up a new password when deleted, run:
sudo passwd -d tom
We can also force expire the password for the named account jerry. Open the terminal and then type the following command:
sudo passwd -e jerry
sudo passwd —expire jerry
When user login they will be forced to reset their credentials when you use the -e / —expire option:

Linux locking an account

sudo passwd -l
sudo passwd -l tom

Linux unlocking an account

sudo passwd -u
sudo passwd -u tom

Conclusion

This quick tutorial taught you how to change the Ubuntu Linux root user and other user account password using the passwd command. You must root user to change the password for all other users, however users can change their password without sudo access. For more info see the passwd command help page using the man command man passwd

🐧 Get the latest tutorials on Linux, Open Source & DevOps via

Category	List of Unix and Linux commands
Documentation	help • mandb • man • pinfo
Disk space analyzers	df • duf • ncdu • pydf
File Management	cat • cp • less • mkdir • more • tree
Firewall	Alpine Awall • CentOS 8 • OpenSUSE • RHEL 8 • Ubuntu 16.04 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04
Linux Desktop Apps	Skype • Spotify • VLC 3
Modern utilities	bat • exa
Network Utilities	NetHogs • dig • host • ip • nmap
OpenVPN	CentOS 7 • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Debian 8/9 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04
Package Manager	apk • apt
Processes Management	bg • chroot • cron • disown • fg • glances • gtop • jobs • killall • kill • pidof • pstree • pwdx • time • vtop
Searching	ag • grep • whereis • which
Shell builtins	compgen • echo • printf
Text processing	cut • rev
User Information	groups • id • lastcomm • last • lid/libuser-lid • logname • members • users • whoami • who • w
WireGuard VPN	Alpine • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Firewall • Ubuntu 20.04

Comments on this entry are closed.

For your own password:
passwd
For root password:
sudo passwd root

FYI, we don’t set root password on Ubuntu for security reasons. One user will be added to the ‘sudo’ group and that will act as admin user. This ensures safety as root account without password is locked and cannot be used for ssh.

Источник

How To Linux Set or Change User Password

Linux Set User Password

Type following passwd command to change your own password:
$ passwd
Sample Outputs:

The user is first prompted for his/her old password if one is present. This password is then encrypted and compared against the stored password. The user has only one chance to enter the correct password. The super user is permitted to bypass this step so that forgotten passwords may be changed. A new password is tested for complexity. As a general guideline, passwords should consist of 10 to 20 characters including one or more from each of following sets:

1. Lower case alphabetics
2. Upper case alphabetics
3. Digits 0 thru 9
4. Punctuation marks/spacial characters

Linux change password for other user account

You need to login as the root user, type the following command to change password for user vivek:
# passwd vivek
OR
$ sudo passwd vivek
Sample putput:

• vivek – is username or account name.

Passwords do not display to the screen when you enter them. For example:

Linux changing user password using passwd

Linux Change Group Password

When the -g option is used, the password for the named group is changed. In this example, change password for group sales:
# passwd -g sales
The current group password is not prompted for. The -r option is used with the -g option to remove the current password from the named group. This allows group access to all members. The -R option is used with the -g option to restrict the named group for all users.

Changing user passwords on Linux

As a Linux system administrator (sysadmin) you can change password for any users on your server. To change a password on behalf of a user:

1. First sign on or “su” or “sudo” to the “root” account on Linux, run: sudo -i
2. Then type, passwd tom to change a password for tom user
3. The system will prompt you to enter a password twice

To change or set a new root (superuser) password type:
$ sudo passwd

Forcing Linux user to change password at their next login

By default, Linux passwords never expire for users. However, we can force users to change their password the next time they log in via GUI or CLI methods. The syntax is straightforward:
$ sudo passwd -e
$ sudo passwd —expire
Let us immediately expire an account’s password:
$ sudo passwd -e marlena
The system will confirm it:

When user try to login via ssh command, they will see the following on screen:

Locking and Unlocking user password of the named account

Note that the following local command does not disable the account. The user may still be able to login using another authentication token, such as an SSH key. To disable the account, administrators should use either usermod —expiredate 1 or sudo passwd —expire command. Also, users with a locked password are not allowed to change their password to get around the security policy set by sysadmin.

We can lock the password as follows:
$ sudo passwd -l
This option disables a password by changing it to a value which matches no possible encrypted value (it adds a ! at the beginning of the password in the /etc/shadow file. Want to unlock the password, try:
$ sudo passwd -u
The above command option re-enables a password by changing the password back to its previous value. In other words, to the value before using the -l option.

• No ads and tracking
• In-depth guides for developers and sysadmins at Opensourceflare✨
• Join my Patreon to support independent content creators and start reading latest guides:
  • How to set up Redis sentinel cluster on Ubuntu or Debian Linux
  • How To Set Up SSH Keys With YubiKey as two-factor authentication (U2F/FIDO2)
  • How to set up Mariadb Galera cluster on Ubuntu or Debian Linux
  • A podman tutorial for beginners – part I (run Linux containers without Docker and in daemonless mode)
  • How to protect Linux against rogue USB devices using USBGuard

Join Patreon ➔

A note about setting up a secure Linux password

Compromises in password security typically result from careless password selection. Avoid common password such as:

1. Words which appears in a dictionary
2. Your first and last name
3. Pet names
4. Kids or spouses names
5. License number
6. Date of birth (DoB)
7. Home or office address

I strongly recommend that you generate a unique password for all user accounts using your chosen password manager.

Conclusion

The passwd command line utility is used to update or change user’s password. The encrypted password is stored in /etc/shadow file and account information is in /etc/passwd file. To see all user account try grep command or cat command as follows:
$ cat /etc/passwd
$ grep ‘^userNameHere’ /etc/passwd
$ grep ‘^tom’ /etc/passwd
The guidance given in this quick tutorial should work with any Linux distribution, including Alpine, Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, Fedora, Oracle CentOS, SUSE/OpenSUSE and other popular Linux distros.

🐧 Get the latest tutorials on Linux, Open Source & DevOps via

Источник

Different ways to Update/Change users password in Linux

It’s a basic thing to set a user password whenever you create an user account in Linux.

Everybody uses passwd command followed by the user name passwd USERNAME to set a password for a user.Make sure you have to set a hard and guess password that will help you to make the system more secure.I mean to say, it should be the combination of Alphabets, Symbols and numbers.

Also, we recommend to change the password at least once in a month for security reason.

If you are working as a Linux admin you might have got the below questions many times in your mind.

• How to Update/Change Users Password in Single Command?
• How to Update/Change a Same Password for Multiple users in Linux?
• How to Update/Change Multiple Users Password in Linux?
• How to Update/Change Password for Multiple Users in Linux?
• How to Update/Change Different Password for Multiple Users in Linux?
• How to Update/Change Users Password in Multiple Linux Servers?
• How to Update/Change Multiple Users Password in Multiple Linux Servers?

When you use the passwd command it will ask you to enter the password twice to set it. It’s a native method to set a user password.

If you don’t want to update the password twice and would like to do this in different way? Let us see in this article

Method-1: Using passwd Command

passwd command is a standard method to set or update or change password for users in Linux. The below way is a standard method to do it.

Run the following command if you would like to set or change password with single command. This allow users to update password in a single command.

Method-2: Using chpasswd Command

chpasswd is an another command will allow us to set or update or change password for users in Linux. Use the following format if you would like to use chpasswd command to change password for user in a single command.

Method-3: How to set Different Password for Multiple Users

Use the below script if you would like to set or update or change a password for multiple users in Linux with different password.

To do so, first we need to get a users list by using the following command. The below command will list the users who’s having /home directory and redirect the output to user-list.txt file.

List out the users using cat command. Remove the user from the list if you don’t want to reset the password for the specific user.

Create a small shell script like below to achieve this.

Set an executable permission to password-update.sh file.

Finally run the script to achieve this.

Method-4: How to set same password for multiple users

Use the below script if you would like to set or update or change a same password for multiple users in Linux.

Method-5: How to change user password in multiple servers

Use the following script if you want to change a user password in multiple servers. In my case, we are going to change a password for renu user. Make sure you have to give the user name for which you want to update the password.

Make sure you have to update the servers list into server-list.txt file. Each server should be in separate line.

You will be getting the output similar to us.

Method-6: How to change user password in multiple servers

Use the following script if you want to change a user password in multiple servers. In my case, we are going to change a password for user1 user. Make sure you have to replace your user instead of us.

Make sure you have to update the servers list into server-list.txt file. Each server should be in separate line.

Use the following script to achieve this.

You will be getting the output similar to us.

Method-7: How to change user password in multiple servers using pssh Command

pssh is a program for executing ssh in parallel on a number of hosts. It provides features such as sending input to all of the processes, passing a password to ssh, saving output to files, and timing out. Navigate to the following link to know more about PSSH Command.

You will be getting the output similar to us.

Method-8: How to change user password in multiple servers using chpasswd Command

Alternatively we can use the chpasswd command to update the password for user in multiple servers.

Method-9: How to change multiple users password in Linux servers using chpasswd Command

To do so, first create a file and update username and password in the below format. In my case I have created a file called user-list.txt .

See the details below.

Create a following small shell script to achieve this.

Method-10: How to change multiple users password in multiple Linux servers using chpasswd Command?

To do so, create the following files and update the required information.

Make sure you have to update the servers list into server-list.txt file. Each server should be in a separate line.

The same way you have to update the users list into user-list.txt file. Each user should be in a separate line.

Use the following script to achieve this.

You will be getting the output similar to us when you ran the script.

Method-11: How to change multiple users password in multiple Linux servers using passwd command?

Use the following script if you want to change the multiple users password in multiple servers. In my case, we are going to change a password for user1 and user2 users. Make sure you have to replace your users name instead of ours.

Make sure you have to update the servers list into server-list.txt file. Each server should be in a separate line.

The same way you have to update the users list into user-list.txt file. Each user should be in a separate line.

Use the following script to achieve this.

You will be getting the output similar to us when you ran the script.

Источник