Changing password security levels and upgrading operating systems on the IBM i

Changing password security levels and upgrading operating systems on the IBM i

We are planning a change from Password Level 0 to Password Level 2, and eventually to Level 3. Do you have any planning tools and/or documents that will help us prepare for this change? We have 3 System i servers: production, backup (DR) with replication using iTera HA, and a separate development server that currently has two partitions.

We are also interested in upgrading our operating systems. For production and backup, we want to go from V5R3 to V6R1, and for development, we want to move from V5R4 to V6R1. How will this affect our change in password level planning?

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IBM provides planning information for changing this system value in Chapter 3 of the Security Reference manual beginning in V5R4.

The main considerations are ensuring that the clients connecting to the NetServer don't require the old Lanman password. In addition, if you've customized your sign-on screen, you'll have to customize the version that provides a 128-character password field. This field, as well as the password field on CHGPWD, CRTUSRPRF and CHGUSRPRF commands all switch to allow 128-character passwords.

Finally, changing the levels requires an IPL before they take affect. While the version of the software the clients are running does need consideration, the release of the server (i5/OS), shouldn't be an issue.

This was first published in April 2009

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