[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#396726: chpasswd does not update opasswd

[Nicolas François]

On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 10:15:35AM -0500, Brian Ristuccia wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 at 10:50:12PM +0100, Nicolas Fran?ois wrote:
> > chpasswd is currently not compiled with PAM support on Debian.
> > 
> > As PAM is responsible for updating /etc/security/opasswd, I prefer to keep
> > this bug open, but tagging it wontfix, until we decide whether we can
> > compile this utility with PAM support.
> > 
> 
> Ok. It looks like this functionality is also broken in programs like passwd,
> which use PAM. See also Debian Bug #396918...

Well, not completely broken. It is just when passwd is run by root.
Because it is considered that root do not have the same password policy
(this could also makes sens).

I recommend you to set users' password by root to a simple password that
can be communicated to the user, but also tag the password as expired, so
that the user have to choose a new password the next time he login (and
then the new password will be enterred to /etc/security/opasswd; also the
administrator do not have to know the users' passwords).

Kind Regards,
-- 
Nekral