Setting expiry data on a per-account basis, with chage

You would only use chage to modify existing accounts, and you would use it for setting either an account expiration or a password expiration. Here are the relevant option switches:

You can set just one of these data items at a time or you can set them all at once. In fact, to avoid frustrating you with a different demo for each inpidual item, let's set them all at once, except for the -d 0, and then we'll see what we've got:

sudo chage -E 2021-02-28 -I 4 -m 3 -M 90 -W 4 charlie

donnie@ubuntu-steemnode:~$ sudo chage -l charlie
Last password change : Oct 06, 2017
Password expires : Jan 04, 2018
Password inactive : Jan 08, 2018
Account expires : Feb 28, 2021
Minimum number of days between password change : 3
Maximum number of days between password change : 90
Number of days of warning before password expires : 4
donnie@ubuntu-steemnode:~$

All expiration data have now been set.

For our final example, let's say that you've just created a new account for Samson, and you want to force him to change his password the first time he logs in. There are two ways to do that. Either way, you would do it after you've set his password initially. We have the following code:

sudo chage -d 0 samson

or

sudo passwd -e samson

donnie@ubuntu-steemnode:~$ sudo chage -l samson
Last password change                    : password must be changed
Password expires                        : password must be changed
Password inactive                       : password must be changed
Account expires                         : never
Minimum number of days between password change        : 0
Maximum number of days between password change        : 99999
Number of days of warning before password expires    : 7
donnie@ubuntu-steemnode:~$