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I'd like to set up an account on a linux server and make the account's password never expire. I'm having difficulties figuring it out with the passwd man page. Could someone please help me out?

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4 Answers 4

up vote 5 down vote accepted

To maximize password expiration:

passwd -x 99999 username

To disable account expiration:

usermod -e '' username

To do both with chage:

chage -E -1 -M -1 username

To set the system defaults, look at /etc/default/useradd

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Use chage command:

chage -M -1 USERNAME
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You want the chage command you just set the account minimum password to a rediculously long time like 9999999999 days.

here is a very good howto - http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/setting-off-password-aging-expiration.html

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chage has an explicit value for this behavior. See bindbn's answer for example. –  Allen Nov 12 '13 at 17:55

The complete command to mitigate any other previous configurations is the following:

chage -E -1 -M -1 -I -1 username
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