Question on usermod -m -M

[priteshchandra]

I am not sure where to post my ? since i am very new to the world of linux. I am doing RH130 and i got confused. I am realy confused.

In our notes, it says this..

#begin notes#
[root@system root]# chage -l alice
Minimum: 3
Maximum: 180
Warning: 45
Inactive: 7
Last Change: May 01, 2003
Password Expires: Oct 28, 2003
Password Inactive: Nov 04, 2003
Account Expires: Dec 31, 2015
[root@system root]#


Minimum: 3

Three days must pass before Alice can change her password again. So she will be able to change it beginning on May 4. If the Minimum is set to zero, then there is no waiting period -- she can change it anytime.
#end notes#


After the lesson, i got to answering the questions at the end of the chapter. and the confusion started here.

question was

#begin question#
On January 1, 2009, the superuser executes this command: chage -d 2009-01-01 -m 3 -M 90 -W 7 -I 5 martha. The first four questions are about martha.

2. How often can martha change her password?
A. every day
B. every three days
C. every seven days
D. every 90 days
E. on her birthday

#end question#

I said that the answer is either C or D but D would be the best answer (since only one correct answer was allowed). So i answered D and i got it wrong. The correct answer was B.

Can someone plz explain this to me how can this be??

thanks in advance and sorry if this is not the correct category...

pritesh

[Dies]

http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man1/chage.1.html

Check the man page it seems pretty clear

-m 3 means that the user can change their pass every three days if they want to

-M 90 means the pass only lasts for 90 days max

-W 7 means the user will receive a warning 7 days before their pass expires

[priteshchandra]

-m, --mindays MIN_DAYS
Set the minimum number of days between password changes to MIN_DAYS. A value of zero for this field indicates that the user may change his/her password at any time.



Minimum: 3
Three days must pass before Alice can change her password again. So she will be able to change it beginning on May 4. If the Minimum is set to zero, then there is no waiting period -- she can change it anytime.



so the correct answer should be "After every 3 days"????????????