On Mon, 18 Nov 1996 10:22:28 -0800 
 greywolf@siva.captech.com (Grey Wolf) wrote:

 > Actually, I saw this happen as well.  It seems that the NetBSD implementation
 > requires that you leave the uid/gid fields blank rather than use zeros as
 > the password routines on the NIS client side will not ignore them as most
 > other implementations do.

This is actually a feature, as explained in the passwd(5) manual page.  It
allows a system administrator to map some or all users to `nobody's uid,
for example.

 > This could have some serious implications for the "naive administrator" who
 > expects NIS to follow certain conventions.

Well, it is documented (in a fairly obvious place), so I don't really
consider it a bug.

Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                                Pager: 415.428.6939