Hi,

First I want to inform you that I'm running a RHEL 6.5 system.

I have some questions about the /etc/login.defs file. Does this file apply to all the users on the system, or does everyone have separate files?

I want to change the PASS_MAX_DAYS value from 99999 to 90 for all users on the system and wonder whats the correct way to do this? I noticed that after I changed this file manually it doesn't work. When typing "chage --list [username]" it shows a completley different value. Also, after managing this file, do I have to restart/reload some daemons or services to make it happen?

Could someone give me some good advice in this issue?

Thank you in advance.

/Lux

Yes this applies to all users on the system. However, it will not automatically change the values of existing users. Once you make the changes in this file the newly created users will have the definitions defined in this file but for existing users you have to make the changes manually. You can use a bash script to make the changes for existing users.

Is used by Linux-PAM. So any software compiled with PAM uses this data.

The /etc/login.defs
is the file set the shadow password parameters, its contain the users account settings on the os its contain the min and max days for accounts access , contain the encryption method contain the umask settings you can check this man page for more information
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/login.defs.5.html

If you would like to change the days and the warn days

Set the PASS_MAX_DAYS parameter to 90
# sudo chage --maxdays 90 <user>

Set the PASS_MIN_DAYS parameter
# sudo chage --mindays 7 <user>

Set the PASS_WARN_AGE parameter
# sudo chage --warndays 7 <user>

Change <user> the user account you want to conigure

I consile to give umask 077 to /etc/login.defs