[SunHELP] cron - bad user

[Andreas Putzo]

Hello,

i am currently setting up a backup system on several machines. Therefor i 
created the user "backup" with no password, so in /etc/shadow it looks like 
this: 
backup:*LK*:::::::
Then i created a crontab for user backup to let him do the backups every 
night. 
Now it becomes curious: This setup works fine on every machine, *except* one.
I found in /var/cron/log this:
! bad user (backup) Wed Aug 25 12:30:00 2004
I googled a bit and found out, that locked out users not allowed to use cron,
so i changed in /etc/shadow the *LK* with NP and it worked.
But i don't get, why the other machines didn't complain about the fact, 
that 'backup' is 'locked out' on the system.
/etc/cron.d/cron.deny are identically on all machines.
It's working know, so it is not a big problem at all, but i really want
to know, why the behaviour differs.
All systems are running solaris 8.
If you have any hints, please let me know.

kindly regards,

Andreas