NAME

       pwquality.conf - configuration for the libpwquality library

SYNOPSIS

       /etc/security/pwquality.conf

       /etc/security/pwquality.conf.d/*.conf

DESCRIPTION

       pwquality.conf provides a way to configure the default password quality requirements for
       the system passwords. This file is read by the libpwquality library and utilities that use
       this library for checking and generating passwords.

       The file has a very simple name = value format with possible comments starting with "#"
       character. The whitespace at the beginning of line, end of line, and around the "=" sign
       is ignored.

       The libpwquality library also first reads all *.conf files from the
       /etc/security/pwquality.conf.d directory in ASCII sorted order. The values of the same
       settings are overridden in the order the files are parsed.

OPTIONS

       The possible options in the file are:

       difok
           Number of characters in the new password that must not be present in the old password.
           (default 1)

           The special value of 0 disables all checks of similarity of the new password with the
           old password except the new password being exactly the same as the old one.

       minlen
           Minimum acceptable size for the new password (plus one if credits are not disabled
           which is the default). (See pam_pwquality(8).)  Cannot be set to lower value than 6.
           (default 8)

       dcredit
           The maximum credit for having digits in the new password. If less than 0 it is the
           minimum number of digits in the new password. (default 0)

       ucredit
           The maximum credit for having uppercase characters in the new password.  If less than
           0 it is the minimum number of uppercase characters in the new password. (default 0)

       lcredit
           The maximum credit for having lowercase characters in the new password.  If less than
           0 it is the minimum number of lowercase characters in the new password. (default 0)

       ocredit
           The maximum credit for having other characters in the new password.  If less than 0 it
           is the minimum number of other characters in the new password. (default 0)

       minclass
           The minimum number of required classes of characters for the new password (digits,
           uppercase, lowercase, others). (default 0)

       maxrepeat
           The maximum number of allowed same consecutive characters in the new password.  The
           check is disabled if the value is 0. (default 0)

       maxsequence
           The maximum length of monotonic character sequences in the new password.  Examples of
           such sequence are '12345' or 'fedcb'. Note that most such passwords will not pass the
           simplicity check unless the sequence is only a minor part of the password.  The check
           is disabled if the value is 0. (default 0)

       maxclassrepeat
           The maximum number of allowed consecutive characters of the same class in the new
           password.  The check is disabled if the value is 0. (default 0)

       gecoscheck
           If nonzero, check whether the words longer than 3 characters from the GECOS field of
           the user's passwd(5) entry are contained in the new password.  The check is disabled
           if the value is 0. (default 0)

       dictcheck
           If nonzero, check whether the password (with possible modifications) matches a word in
           a dictionary. Currently the dictionary check is performed using the cracklib library.
           (default 1)

       usercheck=N
           If nonzero, check whether the password (with possible modifications) contains the user
           name in some form. It is not performed for user names shorter than 3 characters.
           (default 1)

       usersubstr=N
           If greater than 3 (due to the minimum length in usercheck), check whether the password
           contains a substring of at least N length in some form.  (default 0)

       enforcing=N
           If nonzero, reject the password if it fails the checks, otherwise only print the
           warning. This setting applies only to the pam_pwquality module and possibly other
           applications that explicitly change their behavior based on it. It does not affect
           pwmake(1) and pwscore(1). (default 1)

       badwords
           Space separated list of words that must not be contained in the password. These are
           additional words to the cracklib dictionary check. This setting can be also used by
           applications to emulate the gecos check for user accounts that are not created yet.

       dictpath
           Path to the cracklib dictionaries. Default is to use the cracklib default.

       retry=N
           Prompt user at most N times before returning with error. The default is 1.

       enforce_for_root
           The module will return error on failed check even if the user changing the password is
           root. This option is off by default which means that just the message about the failed
           check is printed but root can change the password anyway. Note that root is not asked
           for an old password so the checks that compare the old and new password are not
           performed.

       local_users_only
           The module will not test the password quality for users that are not present in the
           /etc/passwd file. The module still asks for the password so the following modules in
           the stack can use the use_authtok option.  This option is off by default.

SEE ALSO

       pwscore(1), pwmake(1), pam_pwquality(8)

AUTHORS

       Tomas Mraz <tmraz@redhat.com>