Red Hat Knowledgebase

To set the default password expiration when creating new accounts on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, edit the /etc/login.defs file.

For example, to set the default maximum number of days a password may be used, change the following parameter in login.defs:

PASS_MAX_DAYS 30

To set the default number of days warning given before a password expires, change the following parameter in login.defs:

PASS_WARN_AGE 7

Please refer the man page of login.defs for more parameters about default password expiration.