Changing your password occasionally is a good practice and is something that is enforced in many environments. Currently the Computer Science network policies do not force password changes unless your password has been found to be too insecure, or an admin has set a temporary password on your account. Selecting a good secure password can be a challenge but stick to these simple rules and you’ll be OK:

• Use a mix of letters, numbers and special characters
• Use mIxED caSE
• Avoid dictionary words
• Do not set your password to “password”, “changeme”, your username or your actual name

Visit http://strongpasswordgenerator.com if you having trouble thinking of a good password, but be sure your password will not make the Hall of Shame. Choosing a bad password could lead to your account being disabled.

Double-click the icon on your desktop labeled “Change Password”:

This will launch a terminal window:

From here, enter the information requested (make sure the window has focus before typing). Note that the characters you type will not appear in the console as dots or asterisks; however, they are still being entered.

If the password change was successful, the program will inform you of this and the window will then close automatically. If you make an error (either entering your old password incorrectly or not entering your new password the same both times), you will be asked if you would like to try again.

You may also run the command:

yppasswd

in the terminal. This will provide the same prompt displayed to you by the Change Password launcher described above:

yppasswd will exit if you make an error; you will need to run the command again to make another attempt.