(Updated November 13, 2025)
Table of Contents
Overview
The password facility is quite simple. Passwords must be at least 14 characters long. The use of passphrases is strongly encouraged to increase password entropy.
Passphrases are easier to remember and easily constructed. Take 4 to 6 unrelated words and string them together with hyphens or another separator. You can add uppercase to increase entropy further, making the password more difficult to
unintended-sandwich-friend-daily talented-slight-scissor-decay-melting screening-refridgerator-iced-tankard-brew-delight
As you can see, these passwords are easy to construct and can be easily committed to memory.
You can still add capital letters, digits, and special characters. These will certainly strengthen password further. The goal is very long strings that are very difficult to guess or socially engineer.
If you need help, consider using the password generator from Bitwarden.
Changing Your Password
To change your password, you will need to open a terminal window (Applications/Utilities/Terminal). Once in the terminal window, enter the passwd command.
You will be prompted for the current password, and then required to enter the new password twice. If all goes well, you will see something similar to the following:
[user@cslabtest ~]$ passwd Changing password for user user. Current password: <no password text is shown> New password: Retype new password: passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully. [user@cslabtest ~]$
Forgotten Password or Resetting Your Password
Your password may only be reset by the systems administrator. There is no self-service password reset facility for the Computer Science Linux workstations.