pwquality.conf(5) man page

Man Page or Keyword Search Man Apropos

man page | Documentation Library | Writing UNIX manpages
PWQUALITY.CONF(5)         FreeBSD File Formats Manual        PWQUALITY.CONF(5)

NAME
       pwquality.conf - configuration for the libpwquality library

SYNOPSIS
       /etc/security/pwquality.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.

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 5)

           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 9)

           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 1)

           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 1)

           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 1)

           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 1)

           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 entry are contained
               in the new password.  The check is disabled if the value is 0.
               (default 0)

           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.

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

AUTHORS
       Tomas Mraz <tmraz@redhat.com>

Red Hat, Inc.                     10 Nov 2011                PWQUALITY.CONF(5)

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | SEE ALSO | AUTHORS

permalink to the pwquality.conf command: https://manpage.me/?pwquality.conf
link by Name, Section, and OS version of this man page: /?q=pwquality.conf&sektion=5&manpath=FreeBSD+11.1-RELEASE+and+Ports

man pages | documentation library | Writing UNIX manpages
Privacy PolicyCookie Policymanpages@manpage.me — 2025-9-13