How to change the password of a system account?

Glatorius

Okay, this feels like a stupid question but I can't find where to do this.

Problem is:

I have an account in the UbPorts global "Accounts" (the ones in the system settings). In my case it's an Nextcloud account but that shouldn't matter.
I change the password for that account in the remote system, in my case on my Nextcloud server.
Now I want to update the password in my UbPorts nextcloud account. Where do I do that?

The only way I managed it was by deleting the account and creating it anew with the new password. But that can't be the intended procedure, right? How do I change a system account password?

arubislander

@Glatorius said in How to change the password of a system account?:

That kinda defeats the whole point of having global system account when I have to reconfigure every app that uses them anyway in case of a change.

I feel your pain. I don't use either app myself, even though I recently got myself a self-hosted Nextcloud server.

I think the main issue is that your token gets invalidated because of the password change. Did you use your actual account password? What if you create an application password in Nextcloud and use that instead?

EDIT: I can confirm that if you add the account using an application password, then changing the account password has no effect on the token, and you continue to be able to access the server from both Ghostcloud and UBSync.

arubislander

@Glatorius said in How to change the password of a system account?:

The only way I managed it was by deleting the account and creating it anew with the new password. But that can't be the intended procedure, right? How do I change a system account password?

The way you did it is indeed the intended procedure. It works the same way on Desktop Linux (see Online Accounts). You see, the accounts do not store your username and password, but a long lived token that was received from, in this case, Nextcloud.

In fact, it should not have been necessary to update the password of the Nextcloud account on Ubuntu Touch, unless changing the password invalidated the token, which is possible, now I think about it.

Did you confirm that you no longer had access to your Nextcloud server with the unmodified account?

Glatorius

@arubislander said in How to change the password of a system account?:

The way you did it is indeed the intended procedure. It works the same way on Desktop Linux (see Online Accounts). You see, the accounts do not store your username and password, but a long lived token that was received from, in this case, Nextcloud.

In fact, it should not have been necessary to update the password of the Nextcloud account on Ubuntu Touch, unless changing the password invalidated the token, which is possible, now I think about it.

Thanks for the explanation. At least I did not miss something.

Did you confirm that you no longer had access to your Nextcloud server with the unmodified account?

Yes, both GhostCloud and UBSync could not connect to the server anymore.

The thing is, when I have to delete and recreate the system account it is a new account. Then I have to go into every app that used this account and point it to the new account. In the case of UBSync, I have to recreate every sync operantion that used the old account.

That kinda defeats the whole point of having global system account when I have to reconfigure every app that uses them anyway in case of a change.

arubislander

@Glatorius said in How to change the password of a system account?:

That kinda defeats the whole point of having global system account when I have to reconfigure every app that uses them anyway in case of a change.

I feel your pain. I don't use either app myself, even though I recently got myself a self-hosted Nextcloud server.

I think the main issue is that your token gets invalidated because of the password change. Did you use your actual account password? What if you create an application password in Nextcloud and use that instead?

EDIT: I can confirm that if you add the account using an application password, then changing the account password has no effect on the token, and you continue to be able to access the server from both Ghostcloud and UBSync.

Glatorius

@arubislander said in How to change the password of a system account?:

I think the main issue is that your token gets invalidated because of the password change. Did you use your actual account password? What if you create an application password in Nextcloud and use that instead?

EDIT: I can confirm that if you add the account using an application password, then changing the account password has no effect on the token, and you continue to be able to access the server from both Ghostcloud and UBSync.

This is a good idea! I did not think of that.
I will try this too, thank you!

EDIT: App password works, this is the way! I'll just trust it will still work when I change the user PW. XD