SYNOPSIS
chage [-P path] [-m mindays] [-M maxdays]
[-d lastday] [-I inactive] [-E expiredate] [-W warn
days] user
chage -l [user]
DESCRIPTION
chage is used to list and change the password expiry
information of a user. It allows the system administrator
to change the number of days between allowed and required
password changes and the date of the last password change.
It allows also to define when an account will expire. The
chage command is restricted to the system administrator,
except for the -l option, which may be used by an user to
determine when his password or account is due to expire.
If no option is given, chage operates in an interactive
mode, prompting the user with the current values for all
of the fields. Enter the new value to change the field, or
leave the line blank to use the current value.
OPTIONS
-P, --path path
The passwd and shadow files are located under the
specified directory path. chage will use this
files, not /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow. This is
useful for example on NIS master servers, where you
do not want to give all users in the NIS database
automatic access to your NIS server and the NIS map
is build from special files.
-l, --list
This option will list the password expiry informa
tion in a human readable format. The user will see
the date when he changed the password the last
time, when the password will be expire, when the
password will be locked and when the account will
expire.
-m, --mindays mindays
With this option the minimum number of days between
password changes is changed. A value of zero for
this field indicates that the user may change her
password at any time. Else the user will not be
permitted to change the password until min days
have elapsed.
-M, --maxdays maxdays
With this option the maximum number of days during
which a password is valid is changed. When maxdays
plus lastday is less than the current day, the user
expired can be changed. expiredate has to be speci
fied as number of days since January 1st, 1970. The
date may also be expressed in the format YYYY-MM-
DD.
-I, --inactive inactive
This option is used to set the number of days of
inactivity after a password has expired before the
account is locked. A user whose account is locked
must contact the system administrator before being
able to use the account again. A value of 0 dis
ables this feature.
-W, --warndays warndays
With this option the number of days of warning
before a password change is required can be
changed. This option is the number of days prior to
the password expiring that a user will be warned
the password is about to expire.
BUGS
chage is not able yet to change the password expiry infor
mations in a LDAP server.
FILES
passwd - user account information
shadow - shadow user account information
SEE ALSO
passwd(1), passwd(5)
AUTHOR
Thorsten Kukuk <kukuk@suse.de>
pwdutils January 2003 chage(1)
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