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From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: What does '*' symbol in /etc/passwd means?
Message-ID: <16276@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 27 May 91 02:55:15 GMT
References: <27017@adm.brl.mil>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 7

In article <27017@adm.brl.mil> e910276@dal1.kaist.ac.kr (KiChang Yang) writes:
>	bin:*:2:1::/bin:/bin/csh
>Could you tell me what this symbol means?

All it means is that no encrypted password can possibly match it.
In other words, there is no valid password for accessing that account.
(It's a "system" account, not assigned to a human user.)