In some of my servers there is this strange line at the end of /etc/passwd/
consisting of just:
+::::::
Does anyone knows what it means?
I searched the net but only found the same, unanswered question by one Jim from 2012:
Anyone know what this means in Linux SLES 11 and can it be removed
(see https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/understanding-etcpasswd-file-format/).
Servers in question run SLES 12
, the other Ubuntu bionic
.
Best Answer
I'm reposting the below from the following Unix stackexchange answer:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/106215/whta-does-bin-bash-in-etc-passwd-mean
The answer lies in the nsswitch.conf(5) man page: