Dear Expects,
I am facing following discrepancies on our server.
a) When we give wrong root password three times in a row, the root account has been disabled.
b) System is forced to change the old password, whenever we tried to change the password of any of the OS user and for ROOT user also.
I feel, it is looking for some scripts or some script has been changed by oversight.
Please help us to resolve these issues at the earliest.
First, is yours a trusted system?
What's the model of your server and operating system release you've got on it?
-DB
To me its clearly a trusted box but Im not to understand where he sees an issue:
I dont know many root users knowing the box is trusted who would try 3 times in a row... usually at the 2nd attempt he would stop and think twice...
And yes even root is asked the old passwd, so if someone has changed it meanwhile not announcing it to his collegues you are looking for trouble...
Of course when you are a bit neurotic and suffer from amnesia (like me...) you work hard on alternatives e.g. replace the default value of attempts to 5, and make great usage of sudo... And most important (passwd has been changed and you dont know it ...) I grant myself (my users account) the possibility of shutdown/reboot the box...