Hands-on Lab·Red Hat Certified System Administrator
Passwords and Account Aging
One objective covering two things that look alike and are not: password expiry and account expiry. Every `chage` flag here is shown changing a specific field of `/etc/shadow`, so the file stops being a wall of colons - including the field that is a count of days since 1970 rather than a date.
Users and Groups Guide 18 of 67 Intermediate
- OSRHEL 10.0 (Coughlan)
- Kernel6.12.0-55.9.1.el10_0
- dnf4.20.0
- Flatpak1.16.0
- TimeAbout 15 min
- Reviewed23 August 2026
Written against the versions above. RHEL 10 hashes with **yescrypt** - hashes begin `$y$`. Earlier releases used SHA-512 (`$6$`). The prefix is the algorithm id, and nothing in this guide depends on which one is in use.
| Server Name | IP Address | OS | Roles | CPU | RAM | HDD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RHCSA-A01 | 192.168.0.31 | RHEL 10.0 (Coughlan) | Practice node (graded) - spare /dev/sda | 2 Core | 4 GB | 50 GB + 15 GB |
Before you start
- A sudo-capable account.
- The session creates and removes two accounts.
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The shadow file, field by field
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Reading it the easy way
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Setting the policy
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Expiring an account is not expiring a password
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Forcing a change at next login
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Three different ways to stop a login
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What new accounts inherit