Password change

[FeMike]

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I'll change the passwd file like you mentioned. Is copying the original file first and renaming it something else a suitable back up? Sorry if that sounds dumb as I'm still learning.
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Yes, simply copying the file is a decent backup.
It's not dumb to ask for advice on something un-familiar.

For me, I like to use something like this, (adding hours & minutes if I need to have multiple backups in one day);

Code:

cp -p /etc/passwd /etc/passwd.`date +%Y%m%d`
chmod a-w /etc/passwd.`date +%Y%m%d`

This way, I preserve the last modification time of the file, (what you when you use "ls -l /etc/passwd"). And you specify when you made the backup. Plus, if you try to write over the file, you should be prompted that the file is R/O. So harder to make a mistake. Last, I put the date numbers in most significant order to self-sort on a normal file listing.

Thank you. This forum seems more forgiving than over at XDA. Over there everyone has something critical to say for beginners.

Edit: I don't see a search feature to search through all the threads besides using ctrl f, but that only looks for keywords on the current page. Is there a way to search the entire forum instead of opening 20 pages and going through the list?