>  | I'm pretty confused as to how NetBSD handles user accounts..
>vipw		(and add a passwd file line, just like all the others)
...
yep, works fine on NetBSD, not so well on Solaris where all it takes is
one sloppy admin to screw something[1] and vipw will thereafter refuse to
update - tells you this _after_ you waste your time editing.

1. I never bothered trying to find out what upset vipw so, I just replaced 
it with something less picky :-)

>There's also an addnerd package in the pkgsrc tree, but this is so simple,
>I'm not sure why anyone bothers.

I use a script (adduser.sh mentioned in the FAQ), because

adduser.sh < list of accounts to add

sure beats adding 100 accounts manually.

Like all my scripts its a bit overkill - since it works on many different
systems, but it makes life easier if my configs tool can just run adduser.sh
while installing a package to ensure that the package owner exists.

Latest? version (will be anyway by time I send this) is at
ftp://ftp.quick.com.au/pub/unix/adduser.sh

--sjg