The "missing" password!

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 05:28:42AM -0400, Mischa Falkenburg wrote:
> Quick response to Niles...there are no /etc/shadow, or etc/passwd
> folders on this system.

They are files, not folders (more usually called "directories" on Unix),
and they're required to exist on all Ubuntu systems.  It's vanishingly
unlikely that they've been removed, and I suspect you wouldn't even have
got as far as you have done if they had.

However, reading them will not help you anyway, as passwords are hashed,
not stored in cleartext.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]