Using special characters in passwords

[Whipster]

I just thought I would post this so that others who had the same issue as myself could find the answer here. I was trying to use a $ in a password as the password is one that we use for consistency across builds for our customer. The OS6860E switch would not take the password, so after speaking with technical support, I found out why.

The $ is a special character in Linux that is used for inputting data into a variable.

There is a workaround. To use the $ in a password, it must be prefaced by a "\". The line would read like this:

"user admin password \$1234567"

This will allow the switch to see the $ and recognize it as part of the password.

Have a great day y'all!

[silvio]

Hi Whipster,
thanks for sharing this infos.
user test password '$12345678' did work also.


I have similar issue one year ago with ! in password. Answer from Alcatel:
In Linux, ! character is treated as a history command which will retrieve the corresponding command from the history and replace the string. In the history, the 23rd command saved was show snmp statistics. So, we are seeing it in the error message.

Hence, it is advised to avoid using the passwords with ! in the CLI of OS6860 switches.


regards
Silvio