Password Length

[Amiel Tutolo]

I would like to know if there is a place in 11.x to set the password length so that it can be greater than 8 characters? I know the userid is restricted to 8 or less. Is this true for userid also. Thanks.

[Andy Monks]

The user id still has the 8 character limit.

As for the password length, it depends on if the system is trusted or not.

A non-trusted system, the limit is 8 characters

Trusted it's upto the configured value (which you can check and change using sam)

Andy

[Amiel Tutolo]

Is it a big deal going to a trusted system? What are the pros and cons? Thanks

[Amiel Tutolo]

Is it a big deal going to a trusted system? What are the pros and cons? Thanks

[melvyn burnard · Accepted solution]

If you read the man page on passwd, there are details there explaining the content/format of the password:

Passwords must be constructed to meet the following requirements:

+ A password must have at least six characters. Only the first eight characters are significant in an untrusted system.

+ Characters must be from the 7-bit US-ASCII character set; letters
from the English alphabet.

and so on....

Further into the man page, there are additional features for Trusted Systems, e.g.:

Passwords can be greater than eight characters. The system
administrator can specify the password length guidelines for the
system generated options (random syllables, random characters, and
random letters). The actual maximum password length depends upon
several parameters set by the system administrator in the
authentication database. System warnings are displayed if passwords
lengths are either too long or short.


HTH

[Andy Monks]

As of hp-ux 10, you can trust and untrust a system using sam. It does provide auditing and better password security (the passwords aren't held in /etc/passwd) so a normal user can run 'crack' or similar on them.

It all depends on what you need.

[melvyn burnard]

As of 11.x, Trusting and un-Trusting a system is easily performed by using SAM.
The pros and cons are not so easy to enumerate, but basically pro is you have tighter control of the system, and a con is that this could increase Sys Admin person's workload.

Best idea is to read up on Trusted Systems at :
http://www.docs.hp.com

[Amiel Tutolo]

Thanks for all the answers. I will go do some reading now.