The "missing" password!

[Mischa Falkenburg]

On 03/31/2014 08:01 AM, Colin Watson wrote:
> 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.
>
I didn't say that they were removed. I called them folders incorrectly. 
When I looked at /etc, I didn't see either /shadow or /passwd.

How would YOU find them - hashed or not?