Hello, I'm stuck with this question that is on my final exam review. Can anyone please take some time to help me out? question... The following are some result: [localhost~]$ cat /etc/passwd | wc 1303 2595 87398 [localhost~]$ cat /etc/group | wc 66 66 930 [localhost~]$ cat /etc/shadow | wc cat: /etc/shadow: Permission denied 0 0 0 Predict the number of lines in the shadow file. Justify. Thanks a lot guys..

1303

Almost all of the *NIX systems use /etc/shadhow is used to store the encrypted passwords, and with root user has read permisson on it. But if you ever get root access to the system you can see that the data contained in this file is begins with user:encrypted_password a normal user on a system also gets the su previlage but only temprarily, during the password change using passwd command. menaing all the users who are created using useradd / adduser command are created in /etc/passwd and a corresponding encrypted password entry is created in /etc/shadow. So you can safely say that the number of lines in /etc/shadow = line in /etc/passwd ( Unless a users like sshd is added by hand to /etc/passwd. This user is a false user on system) Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot for the help!