HP/UX 10.20 and 11.00 - specific password values

[James Martens]

Hey, all.

A client wants to have specific password settings for users - for instance, the first and last characters of their password must be alphabetic characters, they must have at least three numeric characters, at least two special characters..you know the drill. I don't remember ever seeing this on an HP system before (unlike AIX, where you can set it right in the user creation, and it checks the users selections when they enter a new password..) - does it actually exist, or do you have to convert over to a trusted system to get that kind of granularity in HP/UX?

If I don't need to switch to a trusted system, where is the man page for this? I can't find anything, and a search at deja really didn't turn anything up either.

Thanks.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi James, you must convert to to trusted to do a portion of what you are trying to do. If you must remain non-trusted (running NIS for example) then you would then have to code a replacement for passwd (or yppasswd for NIS).
I've actually had to do that a few times. The yppasswd(3) function makes it rather easy.

Regards, Clay

[James Martens]

Hey, Clay.

Yep, I figured out afterwards that going to a trusted system would be the only way to do a few of the things that I needed; However, setting specific password values doesn't seem to be covered by HP/UX (unlike AIX). This is a moot point, I suppose, as the client does not want to convert to a trusted system.

Under HP/UX 10.20, however, the man page for passwd mentions passwd.rule (or passwd.rules). However, there is not passwd.rule man page. Go figure. :P

Thanks.