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I've often created temporary passwords for users for my own development machine for initial id creation.

For other environments, I've seen admins have the ability to have a password show as expired immediately, forcing me to change my password on first login.

How does one do this? (In this specific case I am using RHEL, but I'm hoping this information is universal across all/most linux distros)

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2 Answers 2

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You can use the command 

chage -d 0 [username]

to change the users expiration date, forcing them to change their password on first log in.

You can read more about it in the man pages for chage and usermod.

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11

There is a switch for passwd, -e. From the manpage (man passwd):

-e, --expire Immediately expire an accounts password. This in effect can force a user to change his/her password at the users next login.

So

 sudo passwd -e LOGIN

should do it.

From the comments, I know that there is more variation than what I expected. So this is an Xubuntu 10.04 installation, and this is, what file reports:

file $(which passwd)
/usr/bin/passwd: setuid ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.15, stripped
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  • Interesting, my passwd doesn't have this option. I will still note this as well though. Which linux distro did this passwd come from?
    – user606723
    Apr 9, 2012 at 19:49
  • You're right. I way too often forget to mention what I'm using. I added more information.
    – user unknown
    Apr 9, 2012 at 20:54

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