Ignore "Bad: new and old password are too similar"

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

4 Answers

For me I was able to avoid this message:

Bad: new password is just a wrapped version of the old one (and a few other similar messages)

by running $sudo passwd <my_username> instead of just $ passwd

Just obviously be aware of the security implications but at least it allows it now.

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 (preferably using a pastebin).

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 to 0 and set Maximum Password Age to 99999 to keep your current password indefinitely and don't want it to expire.

More info: Ubuntu Server Guide - Ubuntu User Management: Password Expiration

doesn't seem to list the relevant options - it mentions /etc/pam.d/common-password but without details of what precisely is meant by rule-sets like nullok_secure or what other rule-sets are available.

Mentioning a document like man pam_unix might be useful here?