ish <ish@glas.apc.org>  wrote:
 > Playing with unix box (NetBSD 1.2) for learning I run 'vipw' from a
 > remote WinNT machine via telnet session. At that moment the NT displayed
 > me a 'blue screen of dead'. After restarting NT I telnet again and
 > discovered that the previous telnet session is still active and the
 > system didn't abort it as well as shell and vipw. Well, I killed it with
 > 'kill -9' command, and checked the /etc/master.passwd - it was OK. I run
 > vipw again and got:
 > 
 > vipw: the passwd file is busy

rm /etc/ptmp