CHANGING AN ACCOUNT EXPIRATION DATE

If you need  a temporary access on a system, you can set the expiry date of an account.  The administrator can change the account expiration date so that the account is disabled on a set date.  If you want to cange the account expiration date of a user, run thefollowing command:

#usermod –e MM – DD-YYYY

In the preceeding command MM-DD-YYYY  represents the month, day and year; two-digit year fields are also accepted.

Let’s take an example where you want an account for user deven to be expired on March 1, 2010. You can use the following command for this purpose:

  

Usermod –e 03/01/10 deven

This command resets the account expiration date for the ser deven t to Marc 1, 2010

Changing Finger  Information

If you want to have the information about users on a system.  Youcan use the following finger command;

#finger

You can obtain the user’s full name, office location, and phone number from the preceding finger command.  For example, to get the user deven full name, terminal name. home directory type the finger command as follows:

#finge – 1 deven

The proceeding command prints the terminal name, home directory, mail status, home phone number of the user deven. 

The chfn command is used to change a user’s finger information.  To change finger information for deven, type the chifn command as follows:

#chfn deven

If you not specified which information (whether Full name, Phone number or directory )You want to change, you’ll be prompted for each field information for the user.  At the prompt, you can enter the new information. Or just press return to leave the field unchanged or enter the keyword “ none” to make the field blank.

Deleting Users

The userdel command is used to delelte a user account.  In order to delete previously created use, Mahedra, type the userdel command as follows:

#userdel Manhedra

You can use an –r option with userde.  If you would like to remove the user’s home directory also. Let’s summarize the main points of the Lab.

Summary

In this L ab. You learn to create, modify, delete, and disable user accounts using command line tools in Unix environment.  You also learn to modifying Information of an existing user by changing the home directory. UIDs and GIDS, account expiration datem and finger information.  Toward the end of the chapter, you learn to delete user account.