Hashed passwords are NOT similar although the salt and password are similar

Question

I had created two users on Linux with the same exact passwords, but when I looked at the /etc/shadow file, I found that the hashed values look different, although the salt file is the same. (Please see below, j9T is the salt). Why the hashed passwords are NOT similar, although the slat and password are similar?

# tail /etc/shadow
Bob:$y$**j9T**$ewJ0HB756BZDnPjx7zzbm0$i39AKrfuQuvvoQJpujwWd7Z4bcZgN1l0IWeJsNmLzg7:19254:0:99999:7:::
Bob:$y$**j9T**$pFF5c93UZvdFYD2nanxEO.$SMhaxtPUPEUZdZZx.b1tGmjXgM67nqBJgMk2sNP.5s4:19254:0:99999:7:::

Answer 1

The second field (j9T) is not the salt, it's the param (hash complexity parameter). You could read more information about the format of the hash here and here

You salt is actually the third field, and you can see it's different.

The actual hash is the fourth field.