Safeguard Authentication Services supports and enforces all the Active Directory password policy concepts including minimum password length, age, complexity, lockout requirements and history. It also supports the fine grained password policies introduced in Windows 2008.
UNIX users can change their Active Directory passwords using vastool or with PAM-enabled system password utilities such as passwd.
You can use vastool passwd to change your password or to reset another user's password.
To change your password:
vastool passwd
Follow the prompts to change your password.
To set another user's password:
vastool -u <administrator> passwd <target user>
For example, to set the user bsmith's password using the administrative user Administrator@example.com:
vastool -u Administrator@example.com passwd bsmith
You must first authenticate as the administrative user, then you can specify a new password for bsmith.
On PAM-enabled systems you can use the system passwd command to change your Active Directory password.
Enter the following command:
# passwd
NOTE: On some systems such as HPUX and Oracle Solaris, the /bin/passwd command may not use PAM. In this case you may see output such as:
passwd: Changing password for bsmith Supported configuration for passwd management are as follows: passwd: files passwd: files ldap passwd: files nis passwd: files nisplus passwd: compat passwd: compat AND passwd_compat: ldap OR passwd_compat: nisplus Please check your /etc/nsswitch.conf file Permission denied
If you see this output, you must use the vastool passwd command to change your Active Directory password.
To change the password of a local user in the /etc/passwd file, run the following command:
passwd -r files
This instructs the system to change the local password directly rather than using PAM to change the password.
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