Secret Word

If you have dealt at all with account passwords from the command line, the experience was probably through passwd, run with no options (Figure 1), or adduser, which calls on passwd as part of its operations (Figure 2). Both of these commands guide you through the basics of adding or changing an account password, requiring the usual double entry to ensure you know what you typed. Both were added long ago to Unix-like systems – just how long ago, you can judge by the command names themselves: The writers of passwd were under such tight naming restrictions that leaving out two characters made a difference, and adduser lacks a field for entering users’ email addresses.