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I finally tracked down the cause of this problem with SportChick's help. Thanks SC!

If your server has a user and passwd database file the server can crash when a user connects to the server. I hand edited my user list and forgot to remove the associated password entries. When a user with only a password entry connects the server dies. I think this only applies for globally registered user authentication.

The quick fix is to just erase all of the entries in your password database. Otherwise you have to track down each entry that does not have a corresponding user database entry and delete it from the passwd file.

I erased my password file entries and my servers are stable again.

HTH
Thumper.

Yeah, I figured that out a long time ago

I not only erased my password file, but I removed my entire group database. It only took me 30 seconds to figure this out though. It happened twice, after I fixed it the first time w/ a password erase...I then realized that it stars by adding a user then manually editing the file. The second time there was a lonely "local.cop" sitting at the bottom of my groupdb file. I didnt put it there, but a problem farther back in the file made bzfs add that to the end..I dont know why it did it though. Presumable it was added on oen startup and worked. Then at a server restart the syntax error kicked in. So it's not just the password file, a syntax error in groupdb will cause this to happen as well.

You could have posted this problem and you'd have saved yourself some trouble.