root password keeps expiring

[Jeff Vian]

On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 20:46 -0400, Claude Jones wrote:
> Having a bunch of issues brought on perhaps, by installing kde-redhat in level 
> 5, but that's another story. One thing that is happenning that's baffling me 
> is that my root password keeps expiring. Apparently, that's what's happenning 
> as when I try to su - from a terminal, that's what the message says. Anywhere 
> else I have to put in root password, the box just returns an error about 
> 'wrong password'. I know how to go to single user and reset it, but I just 
> did that three hours ago, and it has expired again! Can someone help? What 
> can I do to stop this? I did open Kuser after the last reset and root was set 
> to never expire, but two hours later, it has.
> -- 

on my system the /etc/shadow file controls the password expiration.
As root look at that and verify the fields look right.

Mine has:

	root:XXXXXXXXXXX:12862:0:99999:7:::
	bin:*:12862:0:99999:7:::
	daemon:*:12862:0:99999:7:::
	adm:*:12862:0:99999:7:::
	lp:*:12862:0:99999:7:::
	sync:*:12862:0:99999:7:::
and more

from "man 5 shadow" the fields are defined as:

            Login name
            Encrypted password
            Days since Jan 1, 1970 that password was last changed
            Days before password may be changed
            Days after which password must be changed
            Days before password is to expire that user is warned
            Days after password expires that account is disabled
            Days since Jan 1, 1970 that account is disabled
            A reserved field

Check the /etc/shadow file and verify the numbers look right there.





> Claude Jones
> Bluemont, VA, USA
>