This ‘password aging’ utility allows you to set an expire date for a user account password for better security.

‘chage’ is probably installed on your system (is part of passwd package on Debian and shadow package on Arch Linux). Then, you can type chage -l <username> to check chage settings for that username:

$ chage -l ricardo
Last password change                                    : sep 12, 2021
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

To edit chage settings for a user you need to be a root user or use sudo.

# To expire a password after 90 days since last password change
chage -M 90 <username>
  • You can disable password expiration as well: 
    chage -M -1 <username>

To expire a password inmediately (apply to next login):

chage -d 0 <username>

You can type chage <username> to enter on interactive mode and edit all settings.

Type chage --help to get more info.

If you have any suggestion, feel free to contact me via social media or email.