> Is this because my /usr/sbin/config is out of date, or is there something
> more fundamental?

Almost certainly; config's grammar changes fairly frequently, most
recently in january 1999 to support multi-valued locators; however,
the line it's barfing on is a multi-valued defopt, support for which
should have appeared in -current in january 1998 (it's the next
version after the 1.3 release branch was cut).

> Why does nothing I ever download from the NetBSD site ever work without
> loads of faffing about? :-((

IMHO, config(1) should really be considered part of the kernel sources
(and in the kernel source tarball)

					- Bill