how do I enter a sudo command when part of my password contains uppercase letters and numbers

Question

Part of my password contains numbers and uppercase letters. How can I know that I am correctly typing my password in a terminal when invoking sudo?

I am not very computer literate, so I would appreciate a simple explanation.

Answer 1

Changing case and adding numbers or other characters makes a password much more secure. While it requires more care when entering it is done in exactly the same way as you enter it anywhere else in the system: using the shift key to enter capitals or special characters as required.

Terminal and most text-based password verifiers will not echo any keystrokes however, and this causes some confusion. Just type the password as would normally with no errors and press enter. Nothing whatsoever will appear on the screen while you are doing this.

Answer 2

Having numbers and upper-case characters, or any other ASCII character for that matter, has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not sudo will be able to handle your password. If you can type it on your keyboard, you can use it in your password.

The only practical difference between the sudo password prompt and a normal terminal session is that you can't see what you're typing with sudo.

Answer 3

If you are using sudo for some GUI programs, you can try gksudo which gives you a GUI to enter password, which atleast shows how much characters you have typed, just like any other password field.