Password renewal does not work when user authenticates against Active Directory

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11

Situation

SLED 11 system is configured to authenticate against Windows Active Directory (AD) and the authentication does work correctly. But when password reset is needed, the new password is not replicated on the AD, that is, after having set a new password through GDM, it is still not possible to log in with the new password whereas the old one is still valid.
The error might look like the following:

"pam_winbind(passwd:chauthtok): request failed: Invalid parameter, PAM error
was System error (4), NT error was NT_STATUS_INVALID_PARAMETER".

Resolution

Edit "/etc/pam.d/common-password" and make sure that it looks like the following:

password        requisite       pam_pwcheck.so  nullok cracklib
password        sufficient      pam_unix2.so    use_authtok nullok
password        sufficient      pam_winbind.so
password        optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so

The order is important.

Disclaimer

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