Root Forced to Comply With Password Complexity Requirements

[Garry Williams]

When did this start?

    garry@ifr$ sudo passwd ppatel
    Changing password for user ppatel.
    New password:
    BAD PASSWORD: The password is shorter than 8 characters
    New password:
    BAD PASSWORD: The password is shorter than 8 characters
    New password:
    BAD PASSWORD: The password fails the dictionary check - it is based on a dic
tionary word
    passwd: Have exhausted maximum number of retries for service
    garry@ifr$

The root user cannot set whatever password he wants on his machine?
Since when?

I wanted to assign a temporary password for a new user and then do

    sudo passwd -e ppatel

to force it to be changed.  For the new user, enforcing password
complexity is, I guess, OK.  But for root?  And why bail after three
tries to get a compliant password?  That seems capricious (not to
mention irritating) to me.

How do I revert this unwelcome change?

System log shows up errors, too:

   Oct 31 16:59:26 ifr sudo[130692]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for
user root by garry(uid=0)
   Oct 31 16:59:26 ifr passwd[130694]: pam_pwquality(passwd:chauthtok): pam_par
se: unknown or broken option; local_users_only
   Oct 31 16:59:26 ifr passwd[130694]: pam_pwquality(passwd:chauthtok): pam_par
se: unknown or broken option; retry=3
   Oct 31 16:59:26 ifr passwd[130694]: pam_pwquality(passwd:chauthtok): pam_par
se: unknown or broken option; local_users_only
   Oct 31 16:59:26 ifr passwd[130694]: pam_pwquality(passwd:chauthtok): pam_par
se: unknown or broken option; retry=3
   Oct 31 16:59:57 ifr passwd[130694]: gkr-pam: couldn't update the login keyri
ng password: no old password was entered
   Oct 31 16:59:59 ifr sudo[130692]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for
user root

-- 
Garry Williams