How to unlock a user account in Solaris 11

This tutorial focuses on how to unlock an os user on Solaris 11 operating system.

Prerequisites

In order to unlock a user account in Solaris 11, you need to be a sudo user or logged in as an administrator account such as root.

Step 1. Become an administrator

Become an administrator or login as a user having Administrative rights (User Security rights profile).

$ sudo su
OR
$ su -

Step 2. Check the status of the user account that you want to unlock

# passwd -s username

-s to check the status of the user account

For example, run the below command to check the status of a user “User1”

-LK denotes that the user account is LOCKED

Now let’s proceed to unlock the user account.

Step 3. Unlock the user account

Use the below command to unlock the user account:

$ passwd -u username
passwd: password information changed for username

After running the command you will get the below message :

passwd: password information changed for username

For example, run the below command to unlock the user account “User1”

Step 4. Check if user account has been unlocked

# passwd -s username

-s to check the status of the user account

For example, run the below command to check the status of a user “User1”

–PS denotes that the user account is UNLOCKED and is having a valid password.