/etc/passwd grungies

[clewis at mnetor.UUCP]

BEWARE: In /etc/passwd blank or otherwise badly formatted lines can
cause *extremely* anomalous behaviour.  Eg: System V accounting can run
away and fill up the entire /usr partition.  It just happened to mnetor...
4 man-hours and a couple of lost UUCP transfers later, our netnews is back 
on-line.

We're a Pyramid running OSx 2.3 [one of these days we'll have time to
catch up to the latest O/S] using USG accounting.  Thanks to our field 
service, Mike Stephenson at Genamation, for pointing us in the right 
direction.  Similar behaviour has been noted on other *non-Pyramid* System V 
systems in the past.

It was probably my fault in this case, but we're not certain.  Grovel, grovel...
Apologies to our downstreams.

Around 4-10 UUCP transfers were lost (probably all news from utcs, but
we can't tell - UUCP wasn't able to log anything).  If you sent anything to 
or thru us between 11pm last night and 8am this morning, please verify that 
it got where it was supposed to go.
-- 
Chris Lewis,
UUCP: {allegra, linus, ihnp4}!utzoo!mnetor!clewis
BELL: (416)-475-8980 ext. 321