Set Password Policies in SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server)

Minimum password length should be 10 characters Password should have one UPPERCASE Character Password should have one LOWERCASE Character Password should have one Numeric Character Minimum Passwords to Remember or Password History is 4 Accounts should be lockout after 5 attempts.

These password policies can implemented using pam file “/etc/pam.d/common-password”

First take the back up of common-password file .

# cd /etc/pam.d/
# cp common-password common-password.bak

Edit the file “/etc/pam.d/common-password” ,comment out the default modules and add the followings lines.

password   required   pam_cracklib.so dcredit=-1 ucredit=-1 lcredit=-1 minlen=10 retry=5
password   required   pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok remember=4 retry=5
password   required   pam_unix2.so nullok use_authtok md5

Save & exit the file.