Preface

By default, the LinuxMint system displays asterisks during password input, which many users find to be a very good experience. While some people may consider this less secure, that's not a big deal—functionality is what really matters.

Configuration

This setting is located at /etc/sudoers.d/0pwfeedback.

This file contains a single line:

Defaults pwfeedback

If you don't want to display asterisks, just add an exclamation mark:

Defaults !pwfeedback

One-click Configuration Script

I also wrote a script that can enable or disable the asterisk display feature for sudo passwords with a single click.

# Enable Asterisk Display (开启星号显示)
```bash
curl -sSL https://gist.github.com/Deali-Axy/409d3d22099a6547f92f761a8cfeeab4/raw/e684032255024fe085663e29487ac0107abd06c6/pwfeedback.sh | sudo bash -s on

Disable Asterisk Display

curl -sSL https://gist.github.com/Deali-Axy/409d3d22099a6547f92f761a8cfeeab4/raw/e684032255024fe085663e29487ac0107abd06c6/pwfeedback.sh | sudo bash -s off

Below is the script source code.

Save as `pwfeedback.sh` and make it executable:

```bash
chmod +x pwfeedback.sh

The script content is as follows:

#!/bin/bash

Toggle Asterisk Display for sudo Password Input

Usage: ./pwfeedback.sh on|off

set -e

CONFIG_FILE="/etc/sudoers.d/0pwfeedback"

if [ "$EUID" -ne 0 ]; then echo "Please run this script as root or with sudo" exit 1 fi

case "$1" in on) echo "Defaults pwfeedback" > "$CONFIG_FILE" echo "Enabled: sudo will display asterisks (*) when entering the password" ;; off) echo "Defaults !pwfeedback" > "$CONFIG_FILE" echo "Disabled: sudo will not display asterisks when entering the password" ;; *) echo "Usage: $0 {on|off}" exit 1 ;; esac

You can use the following command to toggle it:

```bash
# Enable Asterisk Display
sudo ./pwfeedback.sh on
# Disable asterisk display
sudo ./pwfeedback.sh off

References

• https://www.zhihu.com/question/580286026/answer/3343182381