Changing platform user password

Any platform user from ibmapadmins or ibmapusers group can change their own password when logged in to control nodes using CLI.

About this task

Note: Unless a custom password policy is applied on the system (see Defining password policies), you are required to change the apadmin password before the expiry of the password. The max lifetime of the default apadmin password is 90 days. It is recommended to modify to the default password. Note that the platform user apadmin has an alias user name admin to use to log in to the web console. The web console can use both, admin or apadmin, which internally point to the same user : apadmin and they both have the same password. However, CLI operations must always be performed with username apadmin.
Important: If you are to change the password for the default administrative user of the system with this procedure, you must use the apadmin username to ssh to the control node (e1n1), and not its admin alias username. The admin username on control nodes is reserved for the system IPA LDAP user, and its password must not be changed. When you change the password for apadmin with the following procedure, the password for its alias user admin used to log in to the web console is also changed.

Procedure

  1. Log in to any control node with your user ID: 
    ssh user@e1n1
  2. Run the following command: 
    passwd
    Example:
    [root@e1n1 ~]# ssh testuser@e1n1
Password:
[testuser@e1n1 ~]$ passwd
Changing password for user testuser.
Current Password:
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
    Note: Only the following special characters are allowed in passwords: !@#$%^&*(),.<>[]-=+?