[DESKTOP] Getting warned of upcoming password expiration

[Ofnuts]

Is there a desktop-friendly way (in 14.04) to be warned when one's password is about to expire? As far as I can tell the KDE session login is not even able to let me log in one last time and then force me to replace the password on the spot as it is done in some other operating system that shall remain nameless.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Run KUser, select the user account and tab "Password Management"

I set the time to expire to 99999 days, which is somewhat past my expected lifetime...

[Ofnuts]

Run KUser, select the user account and tab "Password Management"

I set the time to expire to 99999 days, which is somewhat past my expected lifetime...

Password expiration isn't my choice, I have to live with it (and it's not that bad, as long as you get an advance warning, so you can start to think about the next one).

[wizard10000]

Depends on where the password is maintained as the notification needs to come from there. Only the machine that actually manages your password knows when it will expire.

If it's on your local machine (and if you have access to sudo) you can change your password with a -w switch and specify the number of days before you're notified you need to change your password. If your password is maintained on a machine other than your own you're gonna need to bribe a sysadmin to help you

[Ofnuts]

Depends on where the password is maintained as the notification needs to come from there. Only the machine that actually manages your password knows when it will expire.

If it's on your local machine (and if you have access to sudo) you can change your password with a -w switch and specify the number of days before you're notified you need to change your password. If your password is maintained on a machine other than your own you're gonna need to bribe a sysadmin to help you

The password is kept on my machine, and "chage -l {myid}" tells me how old it is:

~/ >chage -l me
Last password change                                    : May 29, 2016
Password expires                                        : Aug 27, 2016
Password inactive                                       : never
Account expires                                         : never
Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
Maximum number of days between password change          : 90
Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7

But this isn't "desktop-friendly".

[wizard10000]

...But this isn't "desktop-friendly".

No, it isn't

I saw a couple of homegrown scripts that were an easy google away but all of them require read access to /etc/shadow, which can only be read by the root account. Only other way I can think of to do it would be to parse the output of 'chage -l', compare the expiration date to the current date and pop up a dialog or send an email if your password is about to expire - but I haven't found a script that does it that way and the task exceeds my own limited scripting capabilities. Perhaps someone else has an idea?

[elijathegold]

Install kuser from Discover or by running sudo apt install kuser, it provides the exact functionality you are looking for.

[Ofnuts]

Installed it but it looks like an admin tool to manage users, and I didn't see how I can use it to be warned of an impending password expiration.

[elijathegold]

Select user -> Password Management -> Time before password expires to issue an expire warning

[Ofnuts]

Select user -> Password Management -> Time before password expires to issue an expire warning

This looks like it justs sets the value that "chage -l" displays... but what uses it?

[elijathegold]

Oh I see, you mean when logging in. In that case, I would initially have a poke around in the notification / greeter settings and if nothing suitable is found, to script a solution as suggested by @wizard1000 in post #6

To be honest, if the setting exists in Plasma, it could be anywhere depending on how much the developers drunk while designing it.

[Ofnuts]

OK, so script it is... Looks like Screen saver/Screen unlocked is a good notification candidate (I seldom login but often unlock...).