Which of the following files contains the shadowed password entries in Linux?

/etc/passwd stores user account information such as username, UID, GID, home directory, and shell, but in modern shadow-enabled Linux systems the password field contains only an 'x' placeholder - not the actual hash.

The /etc/shadow file was introduced to store encrypted password hashes securely, restricting read access to root only, unlike /etc/passwd which is readable by all users. It also stores password expiration, aging, and account lockout metadata for each user account, making it the definitive location for shadowed password entries.

/etc/profile is a shell initialization script that sets system-wide environment variables and startup programs for interactive login shells, and contains no password data.

/etc/shdpwd is not a standard or valid Linux system file; it does not exist in any standard Linux distribution.