Installation passwords, OpenVMS/VAX 7.3

[Scott Stillwell]

Just received my hobbyist media & licenses for OpenVMS 7.3 VAX. I'm running under SIMH on Windows XP.

I get through most of the installation fine, but when it prompts for passwords for SYSTEM, SYSTEST, & FIELD, I'm stumped. I've tried all sorts of long, drawn out, complex passwords and none of them are accepted. I understand that I can only use alpha, numeric, $, and _ characters, but I STILL can't get it to accept a password. Passwords ARE over 8 characters, do have both alpha and numeric characters. I've tried passwords where there are no repeated letters or numbers, nonsense strings...it just doesn't take it.

So far, I've blown away the installation and started over approximately 10 times *sigh*.

I know OpenVMS is secure, but JEEZ, this seems a bit extreme. :)

What am I doing wrong? Help!

Regards,

Scott Stillwell

[Jan van den Ende]

Scott,

to begin with:

Welcome to the VMS forum!

The symptom you describe is not my experience.
Maybe they lately added a dictonary lookup, although I severely doubt that for the vanilla installation.

It really SHOULD work, it did for me umpteen times. Just be _VERY_ sure to type the verification EXACTLY as you type your first time entry.
And the initial strings (MANAGER and FIELD) are forbidden.

Success!

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Steven Schweda]

I've been doing this since V5.0 (on real VAX
hardware), and have never had a problem.

> What am I doing wrong?

What, exactly, are you doing?

It might help to see the actual error
message(s), as "can't get it to accept a
password" and "just doesn't take it" are not
very informative. Knowing (exactly) what the
prompt was and what you typed might help,
too.

There could also be some difficulty specific
to the emulator, about which I know nothing.

[Scott Stillwell]

I'll get the exact message in a bit when I'm back to that computer, but essentially it was two errors, a password SYNTAX error, followed by an error that the password was not sufficiently secure.

Thanks for the greetings and the help!

Scott

[Steven Schweda]

There is a word list which is used to
disallow many common words. By default, VMS
tries to prevent you from setting the SYSTEM
password to "MANAGER", for example. Case
shouldn't matter. Inserting a digit into a
word generally makes it acceptable, and
space-free phrases like "FIXMENOW" should be
ok for, say, the FIELD account.


sys$library:vms$password_dictionary.data

[Volker Halle · Accepted solution]

Scott,

welcome to the world of OpenVMS ;-)

I'm sorry, that you get such an impression during your first VMS installation.

But let me try a 'wild guess':

what kind of terminal emulator are you using ? Could it be sending a in addition to the you're typing ?

I've seen this on the console when trying to change a system parameter during conversational boot. The goes into the type-ahead buffer and will be read by VMS on the next input line. As far as I remember, workaround was: type CTRL-U before you enter the next line - to empty the type-ahead buffer.

Volker.

[Scott Stillwell]

That's a real possibility. I'm using the built-in Windows telnet client, but I could use PuTTY...either way, I could hit Ctrl-U before typing the password.

That would be a real forehead-slapper if it were the case. yikes.

I'll try it and let you know.

Scott

[Scott Stillwell]

Bingo! that was it... hanging around in the buffer. Hitting Ctrl-U before typing the password worked perfectly.

Now I just need to use a better telnet client... :-)

Thanks for your help!

Scott

[Antoniov.]

Scott,
my personal Welcome to OpenVMS.

I think you can just configure putty without LF when send CR.
However, a good emulator is very important in VMS because in our world we use some keys like PF1, PF2, etc. not used in *nix world.
I use PowerTerm by Ericom because is included in Pathwork32. I just installed TeemTalk installed on HP Thin Client and it's free. Search for TeemTalk emulator.

Antoniov
http://it.openvms.org

[Volker Halle]

Scott,


I'm using the built-in Windows telnet client


Try the following from the TELNET prompt:

Microsoft Telnet> unset crlf

You can get there by just entering > TELNET without an IP address of name or by typing CTRL+ when in a TELNET session.

HyperTerm should also allow you to change the settings to prevent sending an automatic after .

I did not find an appropriate setting in PuTTY (0.58).

Volker.