I've started to evaluate Ubuntu 24.04 as an alternative operating system for my in-laws as I'm not looking forward to Microsoft's forced upgrade to Windows 11.
Apparently since the last time I used Ubuntu as a daily driver, they've decided to force minimum password requirements... which is appropriate for a website, mobile device, or enterprise systme, but hardly makes sense for a desktop that will never leave the house!
It would be nice if they built an escape hatch like "yeah, I know this is a bad idea, but I know more than you do about this particular situation, so let me set the password to "12345" and let me get on with my life"
The StackOverflow thread about this wasn't totally enough for the newer version of Ubuntu. When I commented out the pam_pwquality.so line, I started getting this error:
Current password: <silently type current password>
passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
passwd: password unchanged
What you're supposed to do first is run this command:
sudo pam-auth-update
and un-tick the option "Pwquality password strength checking".
Then, go back into this file:
sudo vim /etc/pam.d/common-password
and now you can add the underlined bit:
password [success=2 default=ignore] pam_unix.so yescrypt minlen=2
~~~~~~~~
Hit save, and you can make you password "aa" for all the system cares.