Somebody in the thread at some point said: > the spelling of root was changed from "root" to "R00t". i changed to > "root" and every thing worked. > > I want to ask, what is this, this doesnot seem a garbage value or nor > corruption of passwd file. only showing someone changes this. Here we > have bank private network, only two people have access for it me and > another guy. > > what are your opinions?????? I have seen vi do this action when it didn't understand a keycode on teh terminal you are using properly... change the case of a few letters next to the cursor. But IIRC that was busybox vi. Is it crazy to propose someone opened /etc/passwd in vi, and saved it out without noticing this had happened? -Andy