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I can login to Unix (HP/UX) without a problem. But when I try to connect to Informix, I get an Informix -952 error (User's password is not correct for the database server.) How can that be ?


This drove me crazy for hours. Unix and Informix use the same Unix facility to validate passwords. How could it be that I could log into Unix (HP/UX) without a problem, but not Informix, using the same login ID and password ?

Well, under HP/UX, only the first eight characters of a password are significant (if it is not set up as a "trusted" system). HP/UX throws away everything but the first 8 characters of your password when it creates the encrypted password in the /etc/passwd file.

But Informix does no such thing. So - if you have a password that exceeds 8 characters (like I did), Informix uses the entire password to authenticate. Of course this fails since it doesn't match the 8 character password.

So most likely you will want to use a password that has 8 or less characters.

In addition, HP/UX wants you to have at least 6 characters AND must contain at least two uppercase and/or lowercase letters and at least one numeric or special character. Yikes! That doesn't leave much flexibility.


finderr -952