lchage(1) General Commands Manual lchage(1)NAME
lchage - Display or change user password policy
SYNOPSIS
lchage [OPTION]... user
DESCRIPTION
Displays or allows changing password policy of user.
OPTIONS -d, --date=days
Set the date of last password change to days after Jan 1 1970.
Set days to -1 to disable password expiration (i.e. to ignore --mindays, and --maxdays and related settings).
Set days to 0 to enforce password change on next login. (This also disables password expiration until the password is changed.)
-E, --expire=days
Set the account expiration date to days after Jan 1 1970. Set days to -1 to disable account expiration.
-i, --interactive
Ask all questions when connecting to the user database, even if default answers are set up in libuser configuration.
-I, --inactive=days
Disable the account after days after password expires (after the user is required to change the password). Set days to -1 to keep
the account enabled indefinitely after password expiration.
-l, --list
Only list current user's policy and make no changes.
-m, --mindays=days
Require at least days days between password changes. Set days to 0 or -1 to disable this requirement.
If this value is larger than the value set by --maxdays, the user cannot change the pasword.
-M, --maxdays=days
Require changing the password after days since last password change. Set days to -1 to disable password expiration.
-W, --warndays=days
Start warning the user days before password expires (before the user is required to change the password). Set days to 0 or -1 to
disable the warning.
EXIT STATUS
The exit status is 0 on success, nonzero on error.
NOTES
Note that "account expiration" (set by --expire) is distinct from "password expiration" (set by --maxdays). Account expiration happens on
a fixed date regardless of password changes. Password expiration is relative to the date of last password change.
libuser Nov 8 2012 lchage(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
SHADOW(5) File Formats and Conversions SHADOW(5)NAME
shadow - shadowed password file
DESCRIPTION
shadow is a file which contains the password information for the system's accounts and optional aging information.
This file must not be readable by regular users if password security is to be maintained.
Each line of this file contains 9 fields, separated by colons (":"), in the following order:
login name
It must be a valid account name, which exist on the system.
encrypted password
Refer to crypt(3) for details on how this string is interpreted.
If the password field contains some string that is not a valid result of crypt(3), for instance ! or *, the user will not be able to
use a unix password to log in (but the user may log in the system by other means).
This field may be empty, in which case no passwords are required to authenticate as the specified login name. However, some
applications which read the /etc/shadow file may decide not to permit any access at all if the password field is empty.
A password field which starts with an exclamation mark means that the password is locked. The remaining characters on the line
represent the password field before the password was locked.
date of last password change
The date of the last password change, expressed as the number of days since Jan 1, 1970.
The value 0 has a special meaning, which is that the user should change her password the next time she will log in the system.
An empty field means that password aging features are disabled.
minimum password age
The minimum password age is the number of days the user will have to wait before she will be allowed to change her password again.
An empty field and value 0 mean that there are no minimum password age.
maximum password age
The maximum password age is the number of days after which the user will have to change her password.
After this number of days is elapsed, the password may still be valid. The user should be asked to change her password the next time
she will log in.
An empty field means that there are no maximum password age, no password warning period, and no password inactivity period (see below).
If the maximum password age is lower than the minimum password age, the user cannot change her password.
password warning period
The number of days before a password is going to expire (see the maximum password age above) during which the user should be warned.
An empty field and value 0 mean that there are no password warning period.
password inactivity period
The number of days after a password has expired (see the maximum password age above) during which the password should still be accepted
(and the user should update her password during the next login).
After expiration of the password and this expiration period is elapsed, no login is possible using the current user's password. The
user should contact her administrator.
An empty field means that there are no enforcement of an inactivity period.
account expiration date
The date of expiration of the account, expressed as the number of days since Jan 1, 1970.
Note that an account expiration differs from a password expiration. In case of an account expiration, the user shall not be allowed to
login. In case of a password expiration, the user is not allowed to login using her password.
An empty field means that the account will never expire.
The value 0 should not be used as it is interpreted as either an account with no expiration, or as an expiration on Jan 1, 1970.
reserved field
This field is reserved for future use.
FILES
/etc/passwd
User account information.
/etc/shadow
Secure user account information.
/etc/shadow-
Backup file for /etc/shadow.
Note that this file is used by the tools of the shadow toolsuite, but not by all user and password management tools.
SEE ALSO chage(1), login(1), passwd(1), passwd(5), pwck(8), pwconv(8), pwunconv(8), su(1), sulogin(8).
shadow-utils 4.5 01/25/2018 SHADOW(5)