Detailed example of changing Linux account password

Change personal account password

If ordinary users want to change their personal account passwords, they only need to run the passwd command without any other commands:

$ passwd

Sample output:

Changing password for nick
(current) UNIX password:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

The system will prompt us to enter the current password first. If the password is correct, we will be asked to re-enter and confirm the new password. The next time you log in to the Linux system, you can use the new password.

NOTE: When you enter your password, it will not be displayed on the screen.

Change another user's password

As a normal user, you can only change your own password. However, the root user and users with sudo privileges can change the passwords of other users.

We need to log in as root user and type the following command to change the password for user nick:

$ passwd nick

Or use sudo command

$ sudo passwd nick

Output: You will be prompted to enter and confirm a new password

Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

Force the user to change password at next login

By default, passwords are set to never expire. If you want to force the user to change their password at the next login, you need to use the passwd command with the --expireoption followed by the user's username, for example:

$ sudo passwd --expire nick

This will immediately expire the password for the user account.

The next time the user tries to log in with their old password, a message will appear forcing them to change their password:

$ ssh [email protected]

Output:

WARNING: Your password has expired.
You must change your password now and login again!
Changing password for nick.
(current) UNIX password:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Connection to 192.168.121.209 closed.

After the user sets a new password, the connection is closed.