Re: root enforced password change do not work

[fsf-mailing-lists <fml@arean.net>]

hello to all !

the problem was that the 3Volt battery on the mother board was
dead. therefore the system date still restarted at 1970-01-01. And the
login to a user account asked every time change the password.

I found the command 'chage -l', it shows some details which
influence the login procedure. this command can help to see why the
login ask for changing the password::

  # chage -l user      gives the following output:

  Last password change                                    : Nov 18, 2011
  Password expires                                        : never
  Password inactive                                       : never
  Account expires                                         : never
  Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
  Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
  Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7

and with chage user we can change the following values ::

  # chage user         gives the following output:

  Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default

        Minimum Password Age [0]:
        Maximum Password Age [99999]:
        Last Password Change (YYYY-MM-DD) [2011-11-18]:
        Password Expiration Warning [7]:
        Password Inactive [-1]:
        Account Expiration Date (YYYY-MM-DD) [1969-12-31]:

note: the given output do not show the situation on the machine with the
problem. it is the output of a machine which I installed Nov 18, 2011
with the CD ''debian-6.0.0-i386-CD1.iso''.

maybe this can even help someone else.

Reto