| PWQUALITY.CONF(5) | File Formats Manual | PWQUALITY.CONF(5) | 
NAME¶
pwquality.conf - configuration for the libpwquality library
SYNOPSIS¶
/etc/security/pwquality.conf
DESCRIPTION¶
pwquality.conf provides a way to configure the default password quality requirements for the system passwords. This file is read by the libpwquality library and utilities that use this library for checking and generating passwords.
The file has a very simple name = value format with possible comments starting with # character. The whitespace at the beginning of line, end of line, and around the = sign is ignored.
OPTIONS¶
The possible options in the file are:
difok
Number of characters in the new password that must not be
  present in the old password. (default 5)
minlen
Minimum acceptable size for the new password (plus one if
  credits are not disabled which is the default). (See pam_pwquality(8).)
  Cannot be set to lower value than 6. (default 9)
dcredit
The maximum credit for having digits in the new password.
  If less than 0 it is the minimum number of digits in the new password.
  (default 1)
ucredit
The maximum credit for having uppercase characters in the
  new password. If less than 0 it is the minimum number of uppercase characters
  in the new password. (default 1)
lcredit
The maximum credit for having lowercase characters in the
  new password. If less than 0 it is the minimum number of lowercase characters
  in the new password. (default 1)
ocredit
The maximum credit for having other characters in the new
  password. If less than 0 it is the minimum number of other characters in the
  new password. (default 1)
minclass
The minimum number of required classes of characters for
  the new password (digits, uppercase, lowercase, others). (default 0)
maxrepeat
The maximum number of allowed same consecutive characters
  in the new password. The check is disabled if the value is 0. (default
  0)
maxsequence
The maximum length of monotonic character sequences in
  the new password. Examples of such sequence are '12345' or 'fedcb'. Note that
  most such passwords will not pass the simplicity check unless the sequence is
  only a minor part of the password. The check is disabled if the value is 0.
  (default 0)
maxclassrepeat
The maximum number of allowed consecutive characters of
  the same class in the new password. The check is disabled if the value is 0.
  (default 0)
gecoscheck
If nonzero, check whether the words longer than 3
  characters from the GECOS field of the user's passwd entry are contained in
  the new password. The check is disabled if the value is 0. (default 0)
badwords
Space separated list of words that must not be contained
  in the password. These are additional words to the cracklib dictionary check.
  This setting can be also used by applications to emulate the gecos check for
  user accounts that are not created yet.
dictpath
Path to the cracklib dictionaries. Default is to use the
  cracklib default.
SEE ALSO¶
AUTHORS¶
Tomas Mraz <tmraz@redhat.com>
| 10 Nov 2011 | Red Hat, Inc. |