When you run vipw, the program created a few temporary files in /etc.
Since your session hung in the middle of vipw, these files are probably
still there and thus preventing you from running vipw again.  Try looking
for (and deleting) /etc/ptmp.swp and /etc/ptmp and then try again.

-Eric


> I'm not very experienced with unix, so I would appreciate any help in
> this problem solving...
> 
> 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
> 
> As I understand it concerns /usr/bin/passwd file, which is now locked.
> 
> Q: What happened, how to unlock the /usr/bin/passwd and what to do in
> situations like this one?
> 
> Igor.


-- 
Eric J. Hansen
Worldmachine Technologies Corporation
Internet, Intranet and Extranet Development
http://www.worldmachine.com
tel: (617) 357-4040, fax: (617) 357-4949