Password hashes on UNIX

where are password hashes stored on unix

>>2-8
wrong, wrong, wrong.  modern UNIX systems can store passwords in a variety of places using a variety of methods if they are even configured to use passwords at all.  Pluggable Authentication Modules¹ are used by the most popular UNIX or unixlike systems including Solaris, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD...

With PAM, the passwords don't have to be hashed or even stored locally - they might come from LDAP or Active Directory, or maybe users are authenticated using SMB, or NIS, or whatever.  Or the system could be configured not to use passwords but instead some other authentication mechanism.

of course, when your computing experience is limited to your mom's basement, you probably don't see any of these kinds of configurations.

_{¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluggable_Authentication_Modules}