How to limit local user password reuse on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • How to limit local user password reuse on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

  • For security reasons it is generally a good idea not to allow users to reuse recent passwords.

  • Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux-5.4 the preferred method to limit password reuse is by modifying the PAM configuration using the the pam_pwhistory.so module.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 onwards
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

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