A CERN pre-requisite is a password that prevents others using your account and should thus be regularly changed. For the Computer Centre services, users who forget their passwords should contact the UCO (tel 4952), otherwise contact your system administrator. In order to change your password on UNIX use the command
passwd
This will prompt for your current password and then ask for two copies
of your new password (the second just for verification in order to avoid
typing errors). If your node has NIS (previously called Yellow Pages,
NIS is a method of sharing access among a cluster of nodes to some
central files, such as the password file), the command is
yppasswd. If AFS (see Section 
) is installed, the command is
kpasswd.
Your password must be at least 6 characters long and should not be your login name or any simple permutation of it. It is advisable to mix letters and digits in your password. See the article in the CERN Computer Newsletter number 210 (available from the UCO or via WWW) on tips for choosing good passwords.