change of root password in trusted mode

[Holger Dietze]

Hi Jeff,

if I understand that right, on a trusted system only 8 chars of the password are compared, no matter how long the password is? What if somebody wants (for security) a longer password? Or did I miss something?

Cheers, Holger.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Holger,

No you have missed the fact that this question is about conferting to a trusted system, on a default NON trusted system only the first 8 characters are read by hpux (you can enter more) but if you convert to a trusted system then the passwords are 8 characters until changed.

Hope it helps,

Robert-Jan.

[Bill Hassell]

To help clarify the 8 character limit, a non-Trusted system will accept virtually any length password but stores only the first 8. You can login with the first 8 characters correct and nothing but random characters following the first 8, and it still works OK.

However, a Trusted System treats every character as valid. So if your password was p2345678, you could login on an untrusted system with p234567890 and it will work, but always fails on a Trusted system. The fix is to change the password to whatever is needed as far as length. This problem usually shows up just after converting from non-Trusted to Trusted. The 'old' password worked OK but it was longer than 8 chars and silently ignored before conversion to Trusted.

[Steven E. Protter]

For the record, my situation was different.

My system had been trusted for quite some time.

Nobody logged in as root, so there was no opportunity to change the password.

SEP

[Gary Jackson]

This is happening for all my users.

Whenever their passwords expire and they are prompted to re-enter their old password the following occurs.

If their old password is more that 8 chars and they enter the first 8 chars the system allows them to change passwords

If their old password is exactly 8 chars and they enter all 8 the system gives the error. However if they enter the first 7 chars it works.

How do we fix this entire problem?