Comment 2 for bug 238755

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Andreas Simon (andreas-w-simon) wrote : Re: 'Account has expired' message when adding a new user

I have the same error, when trying to use chfn. This also has the neat effect, that it breaks installation of mysql-server, as the pre-install script fails.

This is the command, which fails during the mysql-server pre-installation script:
$ sudo /usr/bin/chfn -f 'MySQL Server' mysql
Your account has expired; please contact your system administrator
chfn: PAM authentication failed

I get the same error when trying to chfn any other user or use adduser:

$ sudo adduser foobar
Adding user `foobar' ...
Adding new group `foobar' (1001) ...
Adding new user `foobar' (1001) with group `foobar' ...
Creating home directory `/home/foobar' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Your account has expired; please contact your system administrator
chfn: PAM authentication failed
adduser: `/usr/bin/chfn foobar' returned error code 1. Exiting.

I too started with a non-disabled root acount, because I installed Ubuntu via debootstrap (no dmraid support in any of Ubuntu's installers).
Thus I locked the root account via 'passwd -l root' later just as aledin did.