disable password requirement

[TPT]

Hi experts

I am trying to disable the stupidly complicated password requirement on my esx 5.5 host. It's ridiculus that I need a 16 character password, some lower case, upper case, numbers then special characters to satisfy the requirement.

I have tried several and none of it seems to work:

I tried to edit the pam.d/passwd so that the requist field contains -1 for each of the Nxs'. set them to disabled, and tried to add the enforce=none.

ex:

esx# vi /etc/pam.d/passwd

password requisite /lib/security/$ISA/pam_passwdqc.so retry=3 min=8,8,8,7,6 enforce=none

or

password requisite /lib/security/$ISA/pam_passwdqc.so retry=3 min=-1,-1,-1,-1,-1

or

password requisite /lib/security/$ISA/pam_passwdqc.so retry=3 min=disabled,disabled,disabled,disabled,disabled

But so far no luck. Creating a simple test user with a test password still fails because of the password.

I even tried rebooting the host and still nothing.

Anyone know what I am missing?

[JPM300]

Hey TPT,

I'm assuming your following this article:

vSphere Documentation Center

Have you tried just setting the numbers to 1

min= 1,1,1,1,1

Also after the changes do you reset the host or management services on the esxi host?

[TPT]

Hi JPM300

I did not try it with 1, I tried it with -1 because that's what I read. let me try it with one and get back to you.

[JPM300]

The 1,1,1,1,1 will set the requirement to 1 letter, so its not disabling it per say, but its just reducing it.

[TPT]

I tried 1,1,1,1,1 and rebooted the host, still fails when i try to create a user, password is test for gods sake.

[TPT]

I am going to try applying U2 for 5.5. I need it to test out another problem i am troubleshooting anyway

[TPT]

nope, updated to U2 did not solve anything.

[TPT]

hey @JPM300

it suddenly started working. I am not sure why. what happens if I just comment out the entire passwd file? would it just disable this plugin entirely.

[JPM300]

Hmmm I've never tried that so I can't be sure? lol

Could always test it, if it blows things up you can just un-comment it.

Just make sure you reboot the host after the changes as I can't remeber when it checks or re-reads the password file.

If you have a host to try it on let us know.