On Tue, 8 Jun 1999, southwick wrote:

> I am brand new to NetBSD (and Unix in general).

No problem  :-)

> I have successfully booted the latest version (at least the lastest from 
> NetBSD.org) on a Mac IIci and edited rc.conf to allow multiuser mode. I 
> log in as root in hopes of making other users, but when I try to run 
> vipw, I get an error saying the passwd file is busy. When I try to run 
> adduser, the command is not found.

Ah.  Try 'man adduser'

> Two questions present themselves:
> 
> 1)  Why is the passwd file busy, and how do I (can I) stop this?

Not sure.  Is it still busy if you don't come up in multi-user mode?

> 2)  Is adduser part of the basic.tgz set? I didn't install the optional 
> utility set, and so that could be why the command is not found.

The 'man adduser' should explain this.  I think that the FAQ doc does too. 
Basically, you'll have to get an adduser package and install it yourself,
even if you install all the standard packages. However, the basic steps
involved in adding a user are something you ought to be familiar with and
have done yourself correctly *before* you start doing it in an automated
fashion. 

> Although the set up instructions say not to do so, I tried editing the 
> etc/passwd file directly in an attempt to add users. (I found a reference 
> to the format in my UNIX book.) Is this contributing to my problem?

Uh-oh.  I expect that's the reason for your troubles.  The /etc/passwd
file isn't supposed to be edited in this way.  It's probably now in a
format that is considered "corrupted'.  Take a look at the difference
between the entry for root (assuming that you didn't edit this one, and
you did use 'passwd' to create a password for root) in the /etc/passwd
file and the /etc/master.passwd file.  The /etc/passwd file isn't supposed
to contain passwords, and the master.passwd file isn't quite in the
/etc/passwd format.

Until a real guru responds to your message, I'd *un*edit it back to the
way it was before.  I'd spend some time reading man pages, starting with
adduser, and working through the other referenced utilities (in the "SEE
ALSO" sections) like pwd_mkdb, passwd, etc. 

> Any help is greatly appreciated.

I must say, that for someone new to UNIX, you have a bold spirit of
exploration.  It helps one to learn quickly... like you are doing now  :-)


/*======================================================================
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chris out-              Christopher P. Gill
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