I run 'passwd' in my user account to change my password as one would
expect. Lets pretend my password is currently 'peanut' for now -- no
this is not my real password and never has been. So, 'passwd' asks for
my current password to verify that I am who I am and I type it in. It
then wants a new password. I have decided to make the new one tougher
so I used 'h4+J,8eFkjS;wEttl4K^2' -- or something like that. 'passwd'
refuses the new password on grounds that it is too similar to my
previous one. I find this really hard to believe since it is much
longer and contains non-alphabet characters unlike my first one. To
test this problem some more, I tried various length passwords with at
least one non-alphabet character in it and I get the same response. I
then used 'walnut' and my password changed without any problems -- no my
password is not really walnut nor has it ever been. The point is, they
were both simple words,-- meaning, all lower case, all alphabetic
characters , and the same length. I would have thought these two
passwords to be the same even if we ignore they are both nuts. I double
checked and I am using the expanded password capability -- MD5. Any
ideas as to what is wrong here? Oh, I also tried it from root using
'passwd -u nut' and have the exact same problem -- as I expected but I
had to try it anyways to be complete.
Notes:
I checked the archive and did not find any references for this.
Platform is Mandrake 6.0
