Differences between hard link and soft link

Hi all!
I'd like to know the differences between hard links and soft links. I've already read the ln manpage, but i'm not quite sure of what i understood.
Does a hard link sort of copy the file to a new name, give it the same inode number and same rights?
What exactly should I do to do this:
I'm replacing the /usr/bin/passwd by /usr/bin/npasswd on over 400 servers. I did a ls -li on /usr/bin/passwd and came up with 5 same inodes, on of 'em being /usr/bin/chfn.
I read the man page on chfn, it's a hard link to passwd.
After moving /usr/bin/chfn to chfn.old, is this syntax correct ( for a hard link?):

$ ln /usr/bin/npasswd /usr/bin/chfn

Thanx for the help....

:confused: :confused: :confused:

This was answered in lots of detail before. A simple keywords search will easily find the discussion.

Please take the time to do keyword searches BEFORE asking questions....

Thanx, it's just that i didn't thimk of the + on the keyword search...

BTW, the "+" was added by the forum search software... all you have to do is put in keywords with spaces when searching.

I used: