vickey_20

I see three passwd files in /etc/ . Normally only one is supposed to be there called passwd but what the other two for , they look similar .

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meton_magis

it would help if we knew what the other 2 were called.

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vickey_20

sorry i forget to mention there names althoug it there in the headint if you see. They are shadow- and shadow.OLD

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bigtomrodney

Anytime you see a file with the .old suffix, it means it's not in use anymore but is there to fallback on should there be a problem. Is it definitely a hyphen after passwd/shadow? If it's a tilde (shadow~) that means the file has been edited by hand.

If you have not edited these files yourself and your system isn't an upgrade from an earlier release I'd recommend using a rootkit scanner to ensure you haven't been compromised.

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vickey_20

i found a link between the two files passwd and passwd- . When one uses the command The contents of the files are interchanged with each other and may be the last file .OLD is simply a backup , don't know for what purpose???

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Mistoffeles

They are both backups.

The one with the tilde is created automatically when you make a manual change with an editor, such as emacs. The .OLD file was probably made when you installed or configured something that modified the original file.