atuinsh/atuin · error

please provide a new password

Error message

please provide a new password

What it means

The change-password command requires a non-empty new password. If `--new-password` is absent it prompts; an empty result is rejected with this bail before any server call, since the server cannot set an empty password.

Source

Thrown at crates/atuin/src/command/client/account/change_password.rs:42

        }

        let client = auth::auth_client(settings).await;

        let current_password = self.current_password.clone().unwrap_or_else(|| {
            prompt_password("Please enter the current password: ")
                .expect("Failed to read from input")
        });

        if current_password.is_empty() {
            bail!("please provide the current password");
        }

        let new_password = self.new_password.clone().unwrap_or_else(|| {
            prompt_password("Please enter the new password: ").expect("Failed to read from input")
        });

        if new_password.is_empty() {
            bail!("please provide a new password");
        }

        let mut totp_code = self.totp_code.clone();

        loop {
            let response = client
                .change_password(&current_password, &new_password, totp_code.as_deref())
                .await?;

            match response {
                MutateResponse::Success => break,
                MutateResponse::TwoFactorRequired => {
                    totp_code = Some(super::login::or_user_input(None, "two-factor code"));
                }
            }
        }

        println!("Account password successfully changed!");

View on GitHub (pinned to c0c717ab04)

Solutions

1. Pass a non-empty value: `atuin account change-password --new-password '<new-pw>'`
2. Check the variable/expansion feeding the flag is populated
3. Run in an interactive terminal so the password prompt works
4. Generate and store the new password via a secrets tool before invoking the command

Example fix

// before: NEWPW empty -> bails
atuin account change-password --current-password "$CUR" --new-password "$NEWPW"

// after: guard first
[ -n "$NEWPW" ] && atuin account change-password --current-password "$CUR" --new-password "$NEWPW"

[ -n "$NEW_PW" ] || { echo 'new password is empty' >&2; exit 1; }

if ! atuin account change-password --new-password "$NEW_PW" ...; then
  echo "Password change failed — verify the new password is non-empty" >&2
fi

When it happens

Trigger: Passing `--new-password ''` to `atuin account change-password`, or the interactive prompt returning an empty line because stdin is empty/closed in a non-interactive run.

Common situations: Headless CI runs with `/dev/null` stdin; unset shell variables in the flag; forgetting the `--new-password` flag while automating; password-manager CLI returning empty output.

Understand the failure class

Background: "must not be empty", "cannot be empty" — required-field validation errors across open-source libraries — this error's family across 41 libraries.

Related errors

• please provide the current password
• please provide your password
• please provide a password
• Config key must be non-empty and must not contain whitespace
• Failed to read from input

AI-assisted analysis of atuinsh/atuin@c0c717ab04 (2026-09-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/01bafbef9070363f. Report an issue: GitHub.