So I'm experimenting with the passwd command to become more failure it. I created an user account that had no password to practice on. I tried using the -u option to unlock it go the response:

Cannot unlock the password for 'duplicateTest'!

Read the man page and it instructs me to add the -f option to force it to accept unlocking an account with no password but !. I type in:

passwd -uf duplicateTest

The response is:

passwd: invalid option -- 'f'

I rearranging the options and it prompted me to enter a change of finger information. Tried separating them, bracketing them ect...no dice.Can't find anything else on the net but what is stated on the man page, to add the force option. This is driving my OCD self crazy, any thoughts?

Well after going quickly through the manpage, I don't see any -f option, and that's what the error message seems to indicate.

-u

This is the reverse of the -l option - it will unlock the account password by removing the ! prefix. This option is available to root only. By default passwd will refuse to create a passwordless account (it will not unlock an account that has only "!" as a password). The force option -f will override this protection.

It just claims that f is an invalid option. The only thing I could have thought of is that my distribution doesn't offer that option. But, I checked and my man page has a section that is identical to the one displayed above and I am logged in as root.