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passwd

User account status

# passwd -S username

username L 04/07/2025 0 99999 7 -1
  1. Username: The first field,username, is the name of the user account.
  2. Password Status: The second field, L, indicates the status of the password. Here, L stands for "Locked." This means the user is not able to login using a password, effectively disabling password-based authentication but not necessarily locking out access if other authentication methods (like SSH keys) are configured.
  3. Last Password Change: The third field, 04/07/2025, shows the date of the last password change. Depending on your locale, this could be in MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY format.
  4. Minimum Password Age: The fourth field, 0, indicates the minimum number of days before a user is allowed to change the password again. A value of 0 means there are no restrictions.
  5. Maximum Password Age: The fifth field, 99999, indicates the number of days after which the user must change their password. The number 99999 effectively means the password never expires.
  6. Warning Period: The sixth field, 7, specifies the number of days before the password expiry date that the user is warned about the upcoming password expiration.
  7. Inactive Period: The seventh field, -1, suggests there is no inactivity timeout. When set, it would indicate the number of days after the password expires that the account is disabled.

In summary, this output shows that the user's account has been locked (L), meaning that while they cannot log in using password authentication, other non-password-based methods might still be available, such as public key authentication if configured. The password never expires, and the system won't lock the account due to inactivity defined by an expiry.