Any reason to have a strong user password?

I recently decided to change my (very) strong user password to something trivial.

This was mostly to eliminate frustration with typing a long password each time I sudo or whatever.

My question is, is there any reason to have a strong user password? considering that most services which I run on my box do not use PAM for auth:

  • apache2 - uses .htpasswd for access
  • sshd - only private keys allowed
  • transmissiond - uses its own http auth
  • mpd - uses its own auth
  • samba - limited to LAN

Physical access to the box is out of the question.


The reason to have a password is the reason to have a strong or even a very strong password, one of the reasons being to protect you from unauthorized access.

If you are certain that your PC is absolutely safe that it doesn't need a password, you may want to have a look at these questions:

  • How to run an application using sudo without a password
  • How do I prevent policykit from asking for a password
  • How to change/disable password complexity test when changing password?