Policy says passwords must be changed at least every 90 days, and the account carol must comply. Which command sets that maximum password age?
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 107. Administrative tasks medium
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The options
Not correct chage -m 90 carol
Wrong. Lowercase -m sets the MINIMUM number of days between password changes. Setting it to 90 would forbid carol from changing her password again for 90 days, which is close to the opposite of the intent.
Not correct chage -W 90 carol
Wrong. -W sets the warning period: how many days before expiry the user starts being warned at login. It does not expire anything.
Not correct chage -E 90 carol
Wrong. -E sets an account expiry DATE, after which the account itself is disabled entirely. It takes a date (or days since 1970-01-01), not a password lifetime.
Correct chage -M 90 carol
Correct. Uppercase -M sets the maximum number of days a password remains valid. After 90 days carol is forced to choose a new one at login.
Why
chage edits the aging fields of /etc/shadow: -m minimum days, -M maximum days, -W warning days, -I inactive days after expiry, -E account expiry date, -d last change date. `chage -l carol` prints all of them in readable form. The defaults for newly created accounts come from PASS_MIN_DAYS, PASS_MAX_DAYS and PASS_WARN_AGE in /etc/login.defs.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 107.1
- What it says
- Manage password aging information for accounts.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 107 and space the ones you get wrong.