Using the passwd command, you can change a user’s password and settings related to password expiry.
There are two possible ways to achieve this, as described in detail, below.
Using passwd Command
To force a user to change his/her password, first of all the password must have expired and to cause a user’s password to expire, you can use the passwd command, which is used to change a user’s password by specifying the -e or --expire switch along with username as shown.
Next verify the user user1’s password expiration and aging information with the chage command as shown.
# chage -l user1
After running the passwd command above, you can see from the output of the chage command that the user’s password must be changed. Once the user ravi tries to login next time, he will be prompted to change his password before he can access a shell as shown in the following screen shot.
Using chage Command
Alternatively, you can use the chage command, with the -d or --lastday option which sets the number of days since January 1st, 1970 when the password was last changed.
Now to set the password expiry of user, run the following command by specifying the day to zero (0), means that the password has not been changed since the above date (i.e. January 1st, 1970), so the password has literally expired and needs to be changed immediately before the user can access the system again.
# chage --lastday 0 user1 OR # chage --lastday 1970-01-01 user1
Next check the user user1’s password expiration and aging information with the chage command using -l option as shown.
Using chage Command
Alternatively, you can use the chage command, with the -d or --lastday option which sets the number of days since January 1st, 1970 when the password was last changed.
Now to set the password expiry of user, run the following command by specifying the day to zero (0), means that the password has not been changed since the above date (i.e. January 1st, 1970), so the password has literally expired and needs to be changed immediately before the user can access the system again.
-l option as shown.
Conclusion
It is always recommended to remind users to change their account passwords regularly for security reasons. In this article, we have explained two ways to force users to change their password in the next login. You can ask any questions via the comment form below.
