Change Your Password and Custom Data¶

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Overview
Considerations
Prerequisites
Procedure

Overview¶

Users with appropriate privileges can change their own passwords and custom data. Custom data stores optional user information.

Considerations¶

To generate a strong password for use in this procedure, you can use the openssl utility’s rand command. For example, issue openssl rand with the following options to create a base64-encoded string of 48 pseudo-random bytes:

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openssl rand -base64 48

Prerequisites¶

To modify your own password and custom data, you must have privileges that grant changeOwnPassword and changeOwnCustomData actions respectively on the user’s database.

1

Connect as a user with privileges to manage users and roles.¶

Connect to the mongod or mongos with privileges to manage users and roles, such as a user with userAdminAnyDatabase role. The following procedure uses the myUserAdmin created in Enable Access Control.

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mongo --port 27017 -u myUserAdmin -p  --authenticationDatabase 'admin'

If you do not specify the password to the -p command-line option, the mongo shell prompts for the password.

2

Create a role with appropriate privileges.¶

In the admin database, create a new role with changeOwnPassword and changeOwnCustomData.

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use admin
db.createRole(
   { role: "changeOwnPasswordCustomDataRole",
     privileges: [
        {
          resource: { db: "", collection: ""},
          actions: [ "changeOwnPassword", "changeOwnCustomData" ]
        }
     ],
     roles: []
   }
)

3

Add a user with this role.¶

In the test database, create a new user with the created "changeOwnPasswordCustomDataRole" role. For example, the following operation creates a user with both the built-in role readWrite and the user-created "changeOwnPasswordCustomDataRole".

Tip

Starting in version 4.2 of the mongo shell, you can use the passwordPrompt() method in conjunction with various user authentication/management methods/commands to prompt for the password instead of specifying the password directly in the method/command call. However, you can still specify the password directly as you would with earlier versions of the mongo shell.

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use test
db.createUser(
   {
     user:"user123",
     pwd: passwordPrompt(),  // or cleartext password
     roles:[ "readWrite", { role:"changeOwnPasswordCustomDataRole", db:"admin" } ]
   }
)

To grant an existing user the new role, use db.grantRolesToUser().

Procedure¶

1

Connect with the appropriate privileges.¶

Connect to the mongod or mongos as a user with appropriate privileges.

For example, the following operation connects to MongoDB as user123 created in the Prerequisites section.

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mongo --port 27017 -u user123 --authenticationDatabase 'test' -p

If you do not specify the password to the -p command-line option, the mongo shell prompts for the password.

To check that you have the privileges specified in the Prerequisites section as well as to see user information, use the usersInfo command with the showPrivileges option.

2

Change your password and custom data.¶

Use the db.updateUser() method to update the password and custom data.

For example, the following operation changes the user’s password to KNlZmiaNUp0B and custom data to { title: "Senior Manager" }:

Tip

Starting in version 4.2 of the mongo shell, you can use the passwordPrompt() method in conjunction with various user authentication/management methods/commands to prompt for the password instead of specifying the password directly in the method/command call. However, you can still specify the password directly as you would with earlier versions of the mongo shell.

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use test
db.updateUser(
   "user123",
   {
      pwd: passwordPrompt(),  // or cleartext password
      customData: { title: "Senior Manager" }
   }
)

Enter the password when prompted.

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