If nscd it's a problem then we can say so here, and if they want in the next version this will be either removed or fixed.
The problems appeared with the release of SuSE-6.2 and were fixed in 6.3+. The fix was to make all applications which need direct access to /etc/passwd such as passwd(1), useradd(8), userdel(8) or usermod(8) open the file directly instead of using the standard getpwent() and family. Not very clean, but efficient. Also, the negative-times have been reduced, if I remember correctly. We haven't seen any problems any more since 6.4.
Ciao, Roberto.
Roman.
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| Roman Drahtmüller