It's very common to keep the text files that are used to generate the NIS
maps in a 
separate directory (ie. not using the standard /etc files).  On a master
NIS server, 
it will then be necessary to run yppasswdd with additional arguments that
tell it 
where to find the passwd and shadow files.

My current solution on Red Hat 7.0 is to add this to
/etc/sysconfig/network:

	YPPASSWDD_ARGS="-D /var/yp/etc"

and to modify the /etc/rc.d/init.d/yppasswd rc script to pass that env
variable, thus:

	daemon rpc.yppasswdd $YPPASSWDD_ARGS