How to force a user to change passwd?

[larryccccc]

I want to force user1 to change his password every 2 days. How to do it by command or SAM(In sam,weeks is used)
Thanks.

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

That sounds sheerly annoying ;)

These links should help:
passwd -f will force a change at next login, you could add that to cron:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x70a983667c40d4118feb0090279cd0f9,00.html

Later,
Bill

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

oops, misread that post. -f is for linux! Well a solution is there in any case!

Later,
Bill

[Alexander M. Ermes]

Hi there.
You can do this with the tool SAM.
- Accounts for Groups and Users
- Users
- highlight the user with the space bar
- Action
- Modify
- Modify password options

Rgds
Alexander M. Ermes

[Fabrice Meynard]

Hello,
it should be passwd -x 2 user

regards
Fabrice

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

from man passwd: (no need of cron!)

-x max Determine the maximum number of days, max, a password
can remain unchanged. The user must enter another
password after that number of days has transpired,
known as the password expiration time.


Later,
Bill

[Frederic Sevestre]

Hi,

You can edit the /etc/passwd (using vipw) and add ",.." at the end of the password field.

exemple :

fred:Brjq6jlN.k/3A:113:20:,,,:/home/fred:/usr/bin/sh

fred:Brjq6jlN.k/3A,..:113:20:,,,:/home/fred:/usr/bin/sh

Fr??d??ric

[Nick Wickens]

I created the attached script to do this - just change the EXPIRE parameter to 2 days.

Theres a temp step in there you can comment back in that lets you gradually change the expiry (saves getting loads of calls in one day from users that can't handle changing their own password) - just comment in the case statements over a few days.

I have never been happy with the date scripting at the end of this so you might want to double check it.

[larryccccc]

Thanks for your rapid replies. I've got another question. when I uses "#passwd -x 2 user1" to do that job,something added to the password field. Can you tell me what's the meaning of it. And how can I to edit it directly to force changing password?

[Fabrice Meynard]

To force user1 to change password at next login, in /etc/passwd at line of user1, modify first argument :
user1:,..:
after second ":" don't change anything.

When using passwd -x 2 user1, you will have :
user1:XXXXX,/.QO:

You can test with a test user. Simple to reproduce.

Hope this helps.

Fabrice

[Rajshree Shinde]

In case if it is a trusted system-use modprpw -e/-E user

Regards,

[Darrell Allen]

For the meaning of the characters added to the hashed password field in /etc/passwd, see man 4 passwd. Look for the info concerning password aging.

If you are not using trusted systems, password aging will only be done in weeks, not days. I believe the day of week for password changes due to expiration is always Thursday (don't know this for sure - seem to remember reading about it somewhere).

I wouldn't edit the aging info directly. I'd use the passwd command (or modprpw).

Bill was right in his first post (at least on my 11.0 non-trusted system): "passwd -f loginid" will require the user to change his password the next time he logs in.

As far as requiring the user to change his password every 2 days on a non-trusted system, you'd need a cron job that did some type of date math to determine if it is every other day. Clay Stephenson's caljd.sh or caljd.pl should do the trick. Search the forums and you'll find numerous references to caljd.

Darrell

[Martin Johnson]

Why would you want to force a user to change the password every two days? That makes it harder to remember the current password. When a password is hard to remember, the user is more likely to write it down - with the overall effect of making the system less secure.

My $.02
Marty