Sean,

> For example, within the ubuntu template  the uids for alice, bob, and  
> carol are 1000, 1001 and 1002, respectively.  These same users have  
> accounts on the RH5 HN server, but their uid are 500, 501, and 502 .   
> When I create the new VE, alice's home directory is owned by uid 501,  
> bob's is owned by uid 502, but carol's is correctly owned by uid 1002.
> 
> My assumption is when the "vzctl create" command is used somehow tar  
> is "correcting" the file ownership in the VE to align with the HN.


You probably want to use --numeric-owner when creating your template
tar.gz. I'm doing something along this:

cd /vz/private/42; tar cfz /vz/template/cache/debian-4.0-test.tar.gz . \ 
 --numeric-owner

Christian