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What are those weird characters after the comma in my passwd file?

April 26, 2017characters comma file passwd weird

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What are those weird characters after the comma in my passwd file?

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The characters are password aging data. Password aging forces the user to change passwords after a system administrator-specified period of time. Password aging can also force a user to keep a password for a certain number of weeks before changing it. Sample entry from /etc/passwd with password aging installed: voyager:5fg63fhD3d,M.z8:9406:12:The Voyager:/home/voyager:/bin/bash Note the comma in the encrypted password field. The characters after the comma are used by the password aging mechanism. Password aging characters from above example: M.