"Dave Smith" <dave@djms.JUNKME.net> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.09.20.23.49.22.139282@djms.JUNKME.ne t...
> On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 13:26:37 -0500, Mike wrote:
>
> > I let my Linux SMP machine lie dormant for a number of months. I am
trying
> > to bring the system "to life" again, but in the interim had several user
> > accounts become expired, how do I re-activate those accounts without
> > deleting them and recreating them?
> >
> > I am a bit concerned as the man page for adding new users states, and I
am
> > paraphrasing, that when an account expiration date passes, the account
is
> > permanently disabled. I don't have too much in the user directories,
but
> > this could be a rather large problem when I start to do development on
this
> > machine.
> >
> > I am using SuSE 8.0 Pro, but the question is one of a more general
concern,
> > and I don't believe it to be specific to any distro.
> >
> > Is there a command that will re-active the existing account without
> > disturbing the user file structure.
> >
> > Thanks in advance
> >
> > Mike
>
> "usermod -U username"
>
> From the passwd(5) man page ('man -S5 passwd'...S5 refers to section 5):
>
>
> -U Unlock a user's password. This removes the '!' in front of
the encrypted password. You
> can't use this option with -p or -L.
>
> The encrypted password it refers to is in the /etc/shadow file (man -S5
> shadow)
>
>
> --Dave
>

Thanks for the help.

Mike