Changing Your Password


Changing Your Password; It's All About You!

It is good security policy to change your password from time to time. Look along the top panel and click System, Preferences. Right at the top, you should see an entry labeled About Me. A personal information window appears, from which you can change or fill in a great deal of personal information (see Figure 3-13). You can also run the command as in the calculator example above by using your <Alt+F2> run sequence and typing the command gnome-about-me.

Figure 3-13. The About Me dialog provides quick access to your personal information. It also happens to be a way to change your password.


You might be asking why Ubuntu provides a space for all these details about you. You don't have to fill in any information here, but several applications do look here. For instance, in Chapter 11, I'll tell you all about the Evolution email package and its contact management functions. In your Evolution address book, there's an entry created for you, which you can send as a virtual business card. The real point of this exercise, however, is to change your password. Click the Change Password button in the top right corner. Doing so brings up the Change Password dialog shown in Figure 3-14.

Figure 3-14. To change your password, you must type the new password twice.


Notice that, like the login manager, your password is not visible. Instead, each key you press is echoed as an asterisk. When you have successfully entered your password, the system asks you for a new password. Then, you are asked for the password again, for confirmation. That's it. Be sure to remember your new password. You'll need it the next time you log in.

Shell Out

You can easily change your password from the command line as well. Just open a shell prompt and type the command:

 [marcel@mysystem marcel]$ passwd Changing password for user marcel. Changing password for marcel (current) UNIX password: New UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password: passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully. 


Although the steps are essentially the same, the wording of the actual password change dialog can change from system to system.


Speaking of passwords . . .




Moving to Ubuntu Linux
Moving to Ubuntu Linux
ISBN: 032142722X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 201

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