passwd: pam_chauthtok(): conversation failure Error and Solutions

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The error “passwd: pam_chauthtok(): conversation failure” can occur when attempting to change the password for a user on a Linux system. This error message indicates that there was a problem with the authentication token (password) change process, likely due to a misconfigured PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) module.

To resolve this issue, you can try the following steps:

  1. Check the PAM configuration for the passwd command by examining the following files:
/etc/pam.d/passwd
/etc/pam.d/common-password
  1. Look for any lines that contain the pam_chauthtok module in these files and comment them out by placing a # character at the beginning of the line.
  2. Attempt to change the password for the user again by running the following command:
passwd <username>
  1. If the error persists, you may want to check the logs in the /var/log/secure or /var/log/auth.log files for more information on the exact cause of the problem.

By following these steps, you should be able to resolve the “passwd: pam_chauthtok(): conversation failure” error and change the password for the user on your system without any issues.

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