Policy requires the account jrivera to change its password at least every 90 days, with a warning starting 7 days before expiry. Which command writes exactly that into /etc/shadow?
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 110. Security medium
Machine-checked — no person has signed for it. This question was read against the source cited below by an automated pass, which found no contradiction. That is a weaker claim than it sounds: the same kind of process wrote the question, so it can confirm its own mistake.
Treat it as a good draft rather than as settled fact, and read the source below before you rely on it. It is not used in mock exams here — only questions a person has signed for are.
How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Correct chage -M 90 -W 7 jrivera
Correct. -M sets the maximum number of days a password remains valid (field 5 of /etc/shadow) and -W sets the number of days of warning before expiry (field 6).
Not correct chage -m 90 -W 7 jrivera
Wrong, and close to the opposite. Lowercase -m sets the minimum number of days between password changes (field 4). With 90 there, the user would be forbidden from changing the password for 90 days rather than required to.
Not correct chage -I 90 -W 7 jrivera
Wrong. -I sets the inactivity period (field 7): the number of days after a password expires before the account is disabled outright. It does not decide when the password expires.
Not correct chage -E 90 -W 7 jrivera
Wrong. -E sets an absolute account expiry date (field 8), given as a date or as days since 1 January 1970. It disables the account on that date regardless of password age.
Why
The aging fields of /etc/shadow map onto chage options letter by letter: -m minimum days, -M maximum days, -W warning days, -I inactive days, -E account expiry date, -d date of last change. The case of m matters, and -E is about the account rather than the password. chage -l prints all of them in readable form for checking the result.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page chage(1)
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 110 and space the ones you get wrong.
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