Notification of Password Expired for Root Equivalent ID

Hi,

I have a Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant) here.

When a user's password is expired, the system will prompt the user to
change the password. However, when a root-equivalent ID's password is
expired, the system would not prompt user to change password. Instead,
it does not allow the root equivalent ID to sign on although the
password is correct. The error message displayed is "Access Denied". I
would like to know, how can we configure so that when a root equivalent
ID's password is expired, the system will prompt for a password change
and then allow user to sign on to the system.

Thanks and regards,
Jenny

I'd suspect that this is done as a security measure because a "root
equivalent" ID has a lot of authority on a system. Your best bet may be
to setup a script for those users that will check the password
expiration at each logon and notify the user when the password is within
n days of expiring. Of course, this won't help the user who goes on a
two week vacation and has the password expire near the end of it.

Phil Sherman


Jenny wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant) here.
>
> When a user's password is expired, the system will prompt the user to
> change the password. However, when a root-equivalent ID's password is
> expired, the system would not prompt user to change password. Instead,
> it does not allow the root equivalent ID to sign on although the
> password is correct. The error message displayed is "Access Denied". I
> would like to know, how can we configure so that when a root equivalent
> ID's password is expired, the system will prompt for a password change
> and then allow user to sign on to the system.
>
> Thanks and regards,
> Jenny
>

In comp.os.linux.security Jenny <yennee_yap@yahoo.com>:
> Hi,

> I have a Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant) here.

> When a user's password is expired, the system will prompt the user to
> change the password. However, when a root-equivalent ID's password is
> expired, the system would not prompt user to change password. Instead,

What is that? Do you have more then one user with UID 0? Very
very bad idea, use sudo instead:

$ man -k sudo
sudo (8) - execute a command as another user
sudoers (5) - list of which users may execute what
visudo (8) - edit the sudoers file

Good luck

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