southwick wrote:
> I am brand new to NetBSD (and Unix in general).
> 
> 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.
> 
> Two questions present themselves:
> 
> 1)  Why is the passwd file busy, and how do I (can I) stop this?

you aborted a passwd file edit and it didn't clean up properly....cd to
the /var/tmp/vi.recover directory and delete anything there.  i think that
will take care of it.
 
> 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.

we don't currently supply an adduser.  use the adduser(8) manpage for a
description of the necessary steps, or grab a copy of addnerd from the
package system if you prefer.

> 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?

this may have created the problem....

later.

colin