Hi!
I´ ve just seen that on my systems there is a file called "/etc/passwd-". What is it for?

Originally unix used the /etc/passwd file to store password in plain text. But to make this more secure the shadow passwd file was created. This program would encrypt the password using the md5 encryption algorithym and add an X in place of where the plain text password would normally be.

The X would tell it to look in a file named /etc/shadow and decrypted the stored password. this means no one can read the password even if they can read the /etc/shadow file.

If you remove the X from the user name in the /etc/passwd it will not check the /etc/shadow to see if the password matches, it will let the user login without using a password.

passwd- is a backup file of passwd
/var/backup/passwd.back is another backup

Ooops, sorry didn't see the "-" after file name, nx5000 is correct it's a backup file. Disregard what I said.

It was a good explaination, though.

Thanks for that.

Thanks for the explanationS ;-)! I was first afraid that this could be the sign of my passwd file having been hacked.

Well it's good to hear that you check your system and ask question if there is something there you don't understand. You will find the same thing will happen to the /etc/shadow, /etc/gshadow, /etc/group and some other files that the system makes changes too.