passwd comments in the logins cmd

[Peter Gillis]

HI,
ux11.11v1, untrusted sys.
`logins -x` cmd the output shows a third column after the 'time between paswd changes in days' and the 'expiration time in days' columns. I can find no explanantion for this info. Can anyone tell me what it is indicating. Our values include -1 in this column.

Thanks
Maria.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

'time between passwd changes' and 'expiration time in days' will have meaningful information trusted systems. 'time between passwd changes' is the minimum time required between the password changes. If you change the password now, it means you will have wait that long to change your password again. "expiration time in days' is the number of days after your password will expire. -1 indicates that this attribute is not applicable.

-Sri

[D Block 2]

I also see:
PS 000000 -1 -1 -1
on a non-trusted system.

[Peter Gillis]

Sridah, Tom, thanks for reply. I am running untrusted system, but from the output the 'time between change' and expiration' cols do appear to be valid for most of the users but I too have a number of entries with 'PS 000000 -1 -1 -1'. I understand this is a valid password, but not the -1 -1 -1. would this have anything to do with having carried out op system upgrades through the life of the system and its users? Also, I have some (quite a few actually) entries with 'PS 010170 7 0 -1' . This date looks like somekind of default date. Any thoughts on how I can get all my date entries to make sense or have erasonable explanations??

Thanks heaps for responses...plenty of points around..
Maria

[Sridhar Bhaskarla · Accepted solution]

Hi Maria,

Even in case of non-trusted systems, it is possible to maintain password expiry options to certain extent. Look at 'man 4 passwd' on constructing password aging. 010170 has a signifance as it is the base date for UNIX implementations. If you find an encrypted password string trailing by a ',', then password aging is applied to that account. The first character followed by , denotes the number of weeks before the password will expire. Next character is the 'minimum time between the password changes'. Look at the above man page for more information.

For the logins where you are seeing some meaningful output, check the encrypted string. It should have a format similar to above.

-Sri

[Peter Gillis]

thanks