Problems with DB2 UDB passwords on Ubuntu 10.04

I was stuck in password length hell with DB2 UDB 9.1.0.5 on Ubuntu 10.04, but a colleague's swift direction to another blogger's posting helped a treat ....

I was getting: -

SQL30082N Security processing failed with reason "15" ("PROCESSING FAILURE").

and: -

2010-06-17-13.46.02.660328+060 I52692G282 LEVEL: Warning
PID : 2392 TID : 2980026576
FUNCTION: DB2 Common, Security, Users and Groups, secLogMessage, probe:20
DATA #1 : String, 67 bytes
Password validation for user db2inst1 failed with rc = -2146500504

when I tried to connect to my database ( locally ) using: -

db2 connect to sample user db2inst1 using <password>

Using the command:

db2diag -rc -2146500504

I can see that the response code means: -

Password length is greater than the Shelby supported password length

However, I'm using an eight character password, which is the minimum length that I can use on this particular version of Ubuntu.

At a colleague's suggestion, I tried upgrading the DB2 product to 9.1.0.9 ( and also updated the instance and DAS ) but to no avail.

My colleague's recommendation to peruse Graham Bucknell's blog posting here: -

http://www.torkwrench.com/2009/05/04/errorcode-4214-sqlstate28000-from-db2-on-ubuntu/

did the trick.

In essence, Ubuntu now hashes passwords using the SHA512 algorithm which DB2 doesn't appear to like - temporarily forcing Ubuntu to use MD5 whilst regenerating the password for the DB2 user ( db2inst1 ) did the trick, and I'm now able to log in using the db2 connect command ... which is nice.

Salut to Graham, and to Axel for pointing me in the right direction.