Error when setting password containing & at command line

[bbjunkie]

Various scripts fail to run when the user's password has the & character, returning "Command not found" and exit code 127

Can it be replicated? Yes, every time.
Workaround: Change password to not contain &

[liponcio]

Also problems with password containing other special characters eg: "~" and ";"

[mrwicks]

You have to escape out the "&" character using either \& or placing it in quotes like "XXXXX&XXXX"

These are shell scripts, so if you're using "weird characters", the shell will try to interpret it. The & is used to place programs in the background, * is a glob, etc. Placing a backslash before the character should work. If you're setting a variable you MAY need to set it with a TRIPLE backslash, i.e. \\\X or if using quotes \"XXXXX&XXXX\" if you're setting variables to do a "one liner".

If you're able to change your password, do that. Go find a website that generates random passwords, have a generate one, and mix up the order of the characters of the password randomly. That way, the website won't know what you're using. You cannot type in random characters, I can prove this statistically :) That's not how the human brain works.