Fedora 16 Gnome 3 - Password Policy Control - Gnome Keyring

[SteveT]

Can someone tell me where the password policy control is?

There seems to be two places to change passwords:

from user>system settings>user accounts>click password field
and activities>applications>other>users and groups>user.properties

In the 'user accounts' option, the screen prompts with secure passwords - if the password is weak, it won't allow the password at all. Where is this restriction held?

The 'user and groups' option is more lax and seems to allow any password.

The reason for the question is that I want to change my login password on a machine that I set up ages ago and have not used since. When I tried to login today, I couldn't remember the password, so logged in as root (which I knew) and changed my password with passwd via a gnome terminal.
I then had issues with gnome-keyring (Seahorse) not being able to access my Evolution EMail accounts. It kept repeating that my login password was no longer the same and asked me to enter the password ( presumably the one that I had forgotten).
So, on the understanding that (presumably) the official GUI password changing tools would also change the keyring setting, I tried to use both password setters to change my password back to what I thought it may have been originally - but I'm having problems with setting a simple password via the 'user accounts' option.

Does that make sense?

[george_toolan]

Try Passwords and Keys. Press the right mouse button on your login password and select Change Password.

Alternatively you can just delete the keyring file:

rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/login.keyring

But this way you would lose all stored passwords ;-)

[SteveT]

Thanks George.

I have been trying all sorts of things. I had tried the password and keys, but that relies upon you knowing the original password.

I had seen the blogs/sites/posts that suggest deleting the login.keyring - BUT as you say that means I lose all the stored passwords - that seems more like a Windows option than a Linux one!

What I find odd is that no-one seems to have thought about the keyring login password and the passwords being changed. If they have - then I need to know which password changer also changes the login keyring password.

I think I have just got around the problem by using another laptop.

My laptop has my standard user password - so my keyring there has a password that I know.
I then changed my 'forgotten' server user password to my laptop password.
I then copied my laptop login keyring to the server in ~/.gnome2/keyrings

I then rebooted the server (probably unnecessary) - when Evolution kicked in, it came up with the keyring 'Your login password has changed' and asked for the password. I entered my now 'standard' password and this time it accepted it ok.

I'm still a bit confused why there are now three different ways to change a user password though - and surely one of them ('passwd', users and groups or user) should change the login keyring? I also don't see where the policy for things like 'length' and strength of password are held (length seems to be in /etc/login.defs) that are used in the user password changer - as those policies stopped me using that utility to change my password to what I think it was originally.