Change a user password in Solaris
To change a user’s password, you must either know the existing password or have superuser (root) access to the system. If you know the user’s password and are logged in as that account, simply follow these steps:
passwd
passwd: Changing password for qmchenry
Enter login password: {OLD_PASSWORD}
New password: {NEW_PASSWORD}
Re-enter new password: {NEW_PASSWORD}
passwd (SYSTEM): passwd successfully changed for qmchenry
After starting the passwd program, you will be prompted to enter the current password {OLD_PASSWORD}, then to enter the new desired password twice {NEW_PASSWORD}. If there is a problem such as new passwords not matching, new password too similar to the old password, or other issues, passwd will let you know with an error message and will usually ask you to try again.
If you have superuser access to the system, you can change any password without knowledge of the existing password (which is very handy when users forget their passwords since it is nontrivial to reclaim a hashed password). As root, run the same program (passwd) and follow the instructions. The only differences are that you need not enter the existing password and many errors will become warnings because the program will let root do what root wants (even if it is a bad idea).









Mick said on October 15, 2008
Thanks for your article
R K Mohanta said on October 29, 2008
In one of server SAS ETL is installed and all libname are using that user id and password so how i will change this without down time
Bob said on December 2, 2009
For changing password as a super user, run the command passwd ‘username’
Anonymous said on February 9, 2010
if i am the superuser how to restrict the user to change the password
Anonymous said on February 9, 2010
if i am superuser then how to restrict the normal users to
changing the password
Anonymous said on February 9, 2010
how to restrict the user for changing the password
suresh said on June 23, 2010
i want to delete the user password ,what is the command in solaris
Yasir said on December 7, 2011
I used the command passwd but after asking for new password two times it gives the message” permission denied “