SunOS man pages : nispasswd (1)
User Commands nispasswd(1)
NAME
nispasswd - change NIS+ password information
SYNOPSIS
nispasswd [ -ghs ] [ -D domainname ] [ username ]
nispasswd -a
nispasswd [ -D domainname ] [ -d [ username ] ]
nispasswd [ -l ] [ -f ] [ -n min ] [ -x max ] [ -w warn
] [ -D domainname ] username
DESCRIPTION
The nispasswd utility changes a password, gecos (finger)
field (-g option), home directory (-h option), or login
shell (-s option) associated with the username (invoker by
default) in the NIS+ passwd table.
Additionally, the command can be used to view or modify
aging information associated with the user specified if the
invoker has the right NIS+ privileges.
nispasswd uses secure RPC to communicate with the NIS+
server, and therefore, never sends unencrypted passwords
over the communication medium.
nispasswd does not read or modify the local password infor-
mation stored in the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files.
When used to change a password, nispasswd prompts non-
privileged users for their old password. It then prompts
for the new password twice to forestall typing mistakes.
When the old password is entered, nispasswd checks to see if
it has "aged" sufficiently. If "aging" is insufficient,
nispasswd terminates; see getspnam(3C).
The old password is used to decrypt the username's secret
key. If the password does not decrypt the secret key,
nispasswd prompts for the old secure-RPC password. It uses
this password to decrypt the secret key. If this fails, it
gives the user one more chance. The old password is also
used to ensure that the new password differs from the old by
at least three characters. Assuming aging is sufficient, a
check is made to ensure that the new password meets con-
struction requirements described below. When the new pass-
word is entered a second time, the two copies of the new
password are compared. If the two copies are not identical,
the cycle of prompting for the new password is repeated
twice. The new password is used to re-encrypt the user's
secret key. Hence, it also becomes their secure-RPC pass-
word. Therefore, the secure-RPC password is no longer a
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User Commands nispasswd(1)
different password from the user's password.
Passwords must be constructed to meet the following require-
ments:
o Each password must have at least six characters. Only
the first eight characters are significant.
o Each password must contain at least two alphabetic
characters and at least one numeric or special charac-
ter. In this case, "alphabetic" refers to all upper or
lower case letters.
o Each password must differ from the user's login
username and any reverse or circular shift of that
login username. For comparison purposes, an upper case
letter and its corresponding lower case letter are
equivalent.
o New passwords must differ from the old by at least
three characters. For comparison purposes, an upper
case letter and its corresponding lower case letter
are equivalent.
Network administrators, who own the NIS+ password table,
may change any password attributes if they establish their
credentials (see keylogin(1)) before invoking nispasswd.
Hence, nispasswd does not prompt these privileged-users for
the old password and they are not forced to comply with
password aging and password construction requirements.
Any user may use the -d option to display password attri-
butes for his or her own login name. The format of the
display will be:
username status mm/dd/yy min max warn
or, if password aging information is not present,
username status
where
username
The login ID of the user.
status
The password status of username: "PS" stands for pass-
word exists or locked, "LK" stands for locked, and
"NP" stands for no password.
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User Commands nispasswd(1)
mm/dd/yy
The date password was last changed for username.
(Note that all password aging dates are determined
using Greenwich Mean Time (Universal Time) and, there-
fore, may differ by as much as a day in other time
zones.)
min The minimum number of days required between password
changes for username.
max The maximum number of days the password is valid for
username.
warn The number of days relative to max before the password
expires that the username will be warned.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-g Changes the gecos (finger) information.
-h Changes the home directory.
-s Changes the login shell. By default, only the NIS+
administrator can change the login shell. User will be
prompted for the new login shell.
-a Shows the password attributes for all entries. This
will show only the entries in the NIS+ passwd table in
the local domain that the invoker is authorized to
"read".
-d [username]
Displays password attributes for the caller or the
user specified if the invoker has the right
privileges.
-l Locks the password entry for username. Subsequently,
login(1) would disallow logins with this NIS+ password
entry.
-f Forces the user to change password at the next login
by expiring the password for username.
-n min
Sets minimum field for username. The min field con-
tains the minimum number of days between password
changes for username.
If min is greater than max, the user may not change
the password. Always use this option with the -x
option, unless max is set to -1 (aging turned off).
In that case, min need not be set.
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User Commands nispasswd(1)
-x max
Set maximum field for username. The max field con-
tains the number of days that
the password is valid for username. The aging for
username will be turned off immediately if max is set
to -1. If it is set to 0, then the user is forced to
change the password at the next login session and
aging is turned off.
-w warn
Sets warn field for username. The warn field contains
the number of days before the password expires that
the user will be warned
whenever he or she attempts to login.
-D domainname
Consults the passwd.org_dir table in domainname. If
this option is not specified, the default domainname
returned by nis_local_directory() will be used. This
domainname is the same as that returned by
domainname(1M).
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Success.
1 Permission denied.
2 Invalid combination of options.
3 Unexpected failure. NIS+ passwd table unchanged.
4 NIS+ passwd table missing.
5 NIS+ is busy. Try again later.
6 Invalid argument to option.
7 Aging is disabled.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWnisu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
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User Commands nispasswd(1)
SEE ALSO
keylogin(1), login(1), nis+(1), nistbladm(1), passwd(1),
rlogin(1), domainname(1M), nisserver(1M), getpwnam(3C),
getspnam(3C), nis_local_directory(3NSL), nsswitch.conf(4),
passwd(4), shadow(4), attributes(5)
NOTES
The use of nispasswd is STRONGLY discouraged. Even though it
is a hardlink to passwd(1), its operation is subtly dif-
ferent and not desirable in a modern NIS+ domain.
In particular, nispasswd will not attempt to contact the
rpc.nispasswdd daemon running on the NIS+ master. It will
instead attempt to do the updates by itself via the NIS+
API. For this to work, the permissions on the password data
need to be modified from the default as set up by the
nisserver setup script (see nisserver(1M)).
Using passwd(1) with the -r nisplus option will achieve the
same result and will be consistent across all the different
name services available. This is the recommended way to
change the password in NIS+.
The login program, file access display programs (for exam-
ple, 'ls -l'), and network programs that require user pass-
words (for example, rlogin(1), ftp(1), and so on) use the
standard getpwnam(3C) and getspnam(3C) interfaces to get
password information. These programs will get the NIS+
password information, that is modified by nispasswd, only
if the passwd: entry in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file
includes nisplus. See nsswitch.conf(4) for more details.
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