iSeries password length change

[JWhitlock]

We're looking at changing our iSeries security level to allow for passwords greater than 10 characters, and to expand the kinds of characters that can be used in passwords. Has anyone had any experience doing this? If so, what has been the effect on World (we're running 9.1)? Oracle support has indicated that there is a #PWD field in the data dictionary, and it's currently defined with a length of 10; however, my cross reference doesn't seem to have it used in any files or programs.

Thanks!

 

[nuffznuff]

My experience has been that passwords are passed as parameters between programs; the approval of purchase orders is one such example.

This means that password lengths will be 10 characters, so changing the length of permitted passwords beyond that could cause you problems.

Proceed carefully.

 

[mgerritt]

We changed our security level years ago. Supporting and requiring upper, lower and symbols has not been an issue (although I cannot tell you what passwords purchasing uses). I have never tried a password over 10 characters however.

 

[nuffznuff]

Referring to my previous post in this thread, I mentioned that purchase order approval uses a program that passes a password to another program.

* PO Approval prog is P43080
* Calls P00CKPWD, which prompts the approver for a password via a display file (window)
* This password is passed to J00CKPWD for verification.
* The password length is set to 10 characters.

Program P5144 (Group Job Profit Adjustments) uses the same process

Program P42070 (Held Order release) uses passwords, but this done differently: user ids and passwords are held on file F42008. Passwords do not have to be the same as that used to log on to iSeries.

Hope this helps. I would have replied sooner, but I am in the UK and I had a wedding to go to on Friday ;-)

 

[JWhitlock]

Thanks everyone for the input on password lengths.

It looks like we can change our iSeries system security level to allow for any character in the password, but we need to continue to limit the password length to 10 characters, from what I'm reading. That gives us some good guidance on how to proceed.

Thanks again!

 

[EmmanuelW]

Don't want to sound pedantic, but password length has nothing to do with your system's security level.
It is controlled by the QPWDLVL system value.
Also, at least at A9.1, the P00CKPWD program contains the following:
"This program prompts for and validates the current users pass-
word. Traditional password lengths (10 char) are prompted via
window. Newer paragraph sized passwords (128 char) are prompted
by a full screen panel. "

Cheers,

Emmanuel