How can I tell if my password is set?

Question

I have been using this server for a few months. At the beginning I sent the admin my public ssh key, and he set up the account for me, and I have only used the ssh key to log in. I definitely didn't have a password at first.

Since then I may or may not have set up a password using passwd. Right now if I use passwd I see this.

$ passwd
Changing password for user myusername.
Changing password for myusername.
(current) UNIX password:

While it seems to suggest that I do have a password, I have no memory of ever doing this.

How can I tell conclusively whether my password is set?

EDIT:
I can't log in nor change password, because I don't know what the password is (blank password doesn't work). The distro is Fedora release 20 (Heisenbug).

Answer 1

The best way is with the following command:

passwd --status username

From man passwd:

Display account status information. The status information consists of 7 fields. The first field is the user's login name. The second field indicates if the user account has a locked password (L), has no password (NP), or has a usable password (P). The third field gives the date of the last password change. The next four fields are the minimum age, maximum age, warning period, and inactivity period for the password. These ages are expressed in days.

So, if the second output field is NP, then, that user has no password set.

Answer 2

You can test this in 2 easy ways.

1. Right after you change the password, as root type login, that will bring you to a login/password prompt.

2. Depending on your system odds are you are using shadow passwords. The file for that is in /etc/shawdow you can look in that file to see if your account has any changes to it.

Here is an example with an account without a passwrod set:

postgres: :16462:0:99999:7:::

Here is what it might look like for a user with a password:

dustin:$6$TQ8e8o92$T9KWfcEVeIpDytW/zSAZzM4512wd/DiiuaYwrYWheH3LYpOsISdRxrCLvPqJZZ66QqdetmaV0ALQohx8nQPFKK0:16425:0:99999:7:::

Notice between the : : is the encrypted password and for the postgres account it had nothing

Answer 3

Try using the following:

passwd -S

From passwd(1) man page we read:

-S Report password status on the named account. The first part indicates if the user account is locked (LK), has no password (NP), or has an existing or locked password (PS). The second part gives the date of the last password change. The next parts are the minimum age, maximum age, warning period, and inactivity period for the password.

Answer 4

You may want to see the /etc/passwd file. The second field on your user indicates the password. If nothing is there you may have no password for your login. On the other hand, if you have an x on this field you have a password associated to it and it may be at the /etc/shadow file