UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Does anyone know a simple way to find out the expiry date of my UNIX user password?

I do not have root access to the box.

Surely there is a way to so this...

From man pages :

.... Thanks for replying. As previosly stated, I do not have root access. Thus, none of those switches are of any use to me.

Any other ideas or workarounds?

A bit more background on my situation.

I am accessing a box, which on logon is not setup to notify me when my password will expire.

On the weekend, my password expired, and as such my weekend cron jobs failed. (I can only assume that cron will not execute jobs as my user when my password is expired?)

I am hoping to write a simple script to notify me to change my password when it is about to expire.

Sort of requesting the root user to change something, is there any way to achieve this?

I have encountered the same problem that I do not have root access.

Appreciate if someone may shed light on getting password expiry date without root access problem.

Many thanks!


- Kevin

Please state your Operating System.

As you deduced, cron will not execute commands in an expired account.

Usually you can only get basic information from a password status enquiry like when you last changed your password and expiry rules (see "man passwd"). From this it is possible to calculate the expiry date.

It's probably simpler to use an "at" job to create a reminder in the future just after changing your password.
If your local rules allow (some don't) you could change you password more frequently than required.