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up vote 7 down vote favorite

I receive this message when trying to change my password:

"Bad: new and old password are too similar"

The passwords' "similarity" is irrelevant for my needs, so I'd like to bypass this.

I tried sudo passwd $my_username

I thought this had worked because I got a message:

passwd: password updated successfully

However, the password change has no effect after leaving the terminal, and my old password is still the only one recognized.

Any ideas?

thanks

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The result shows that your password has been updated sucessfully. Just logout and login back to confirm. – karthick87 May 21 '11 at 14:10
I've logged out and back in, and rebooted my machine. No effect - the old password remains. – user999 May 21 '11 at 14:14
1  
What version of ubuntu you are using? Try changing the user password using GUI method. – karthick87 May 21 '11 at 14:18
Thanks for your help. Using 11.04. Unfortunately, the GUI method doesn't allow a 'similar' password. If what I've done above is seemingly correct, then I'll just need to choose a different type of password. I'm just surprised the sudo method isn't working for me. – user999 May 21 '11 at 14:30
1  
@user999 I can even change my password without it nagging about it being too short (used 1 letter to test ;)) or it being the same as used before or even being the same password as it already is. – Rinzwind May 21 '11 at 14:52
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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

"sudo chage -l username" = use this command to view your current password expiration policies

"sudo chage username" = use this to get change the different password expiration policy fields; set "Minimum Password Age" as "0" and set "Maximum Password Age" as "99999" to keep your current password indefinitely and don't want it to expire.

Ubuntu User Management: Password Expiration

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up vote 3 down vote

A workaround would be to change the old password to a random one, and change it again to a similar one. The password history is not preserved, so this should work fine.

If you need a real solution, please include the contents of your /etc/pam.d/common-password and /etc/pam.d/chpasswd (preferable using a pastebin).

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