I found out a while ago that PAM/shadow allows for blank lines and comments inside of the /etc/passwd file, and have been using that to organize my users. Earlier today, I ran a program (eggdrop 1.3.23) using su -c, and the console froze, and nscd logged these errors to the syslog (some multiple times): Apr 3 14:18:15 ironclad nscd: 326: short write in cache_addhst: Broken pipe Apr 3 14:18:15 ironclad nscd: 326: cannot write result: Broken pipe Apr 3 14:18:15 ironclad nscd: 326: short write in cache_addpw: Broken pipe :and then refused to serve anymore passwd lookups, keeping me from logging into the computer (and making any ls -l or ps process hang and need to be stopped with ctrl-c). I was forced to reboot each time (although one time I had another console open that I was able to use to kill all the nscd processes which fixed it). I propose that nscd not be defaulted to starting at startup during the installation program so that users have to make a concious effort to deem it neccessary to use the daemon. BTW, nscd should be added to the component menu for bugzilla.
empty lines in the passwd file are ILLEGAL. This is not supposed to be a supported feature. I do agree that starting nscd by default is unnecessary, so I changed that in the current glibc rpms.