What a line in /etc/passwd looks like

• merlin:2Cjkno5O/845g:500:500:Marc MERLIN:/home/merlin:/bin/bash

• GECOS field:

• General Electric Comprehensive Operating System

• "Some early UNIX systems at Bell Labs used GCOS machines for print spooling and various other services; the field added to `/etc/passwd' to carry GCOS ID information was called the `GECOS field' and survives today as the `pw_gecos' member used for the user's full name and other human-ID information" (Jargon file)

• Password field: Salt (two characters) + Encrypted Hashed password

• @saltarray=( ".", "/", "0".."9", "a".."z", "A".."Z" );

• The plaintext password is fed through the Unix crypt() function, which hashes the password differently based on which salt is given as argument.

• Notes:

• The Unix crypt() function is not related to the weak crypt encryption algorithm

• "Crypt" is a misnomer, the algorithm is really a hash function