Tutorial : Change user password in Ubuntu 9.10 ( to something simple )

tom — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:16:11 +0000

Last time I installed Ubuntu 9.10 I said to myself, let’s use a good’ol secure password for my user. Two days later I was already regretting my decision.. I’m not saying a password shouldn’t be secure, but a 10 digit password 5 of which are numbers just starts to get annoying when having to type it every time you want to sudo this or sudo that.

No problem thusfar, you just wander to System > Administration > Users and Groups

Note: You might want to skip changing your users’ password when during installation you’ve selected to also use the users’ password to decrypt your home folder. I’m not saying it will, but it could cause problems when the configuration of your login password and the decrypt password don’t match.

You click the user who’s password you wish to change, click properties and enter your current (long and typo-prone) password

Next you enter a finger-friendly password, and confirm before you hit ‘Change password’…

Instead of getting a message that reads ‘Your password has been changed’ you get …

Well I know it’s simple, that’s kind of where I’m getting at!

After some swearing I realised I might as well use the command line to get things done…

Open a terminal and enter

sudo passwd yourusername

You will be asked to enter the current password, enter a new password and confirm.

Thataa! Easy as 123! Damn now I have to go and change my password again…

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Tutorial : Change user password in Ubuntu 9.10 ( to something simple )