Shadow and NIS

[Hal Vaughan <hal@thresholddigital.com>]

I've installed NIS and it is working, but I'm having a problem with the shadow 
file.  (I'm using MEPIS systems for the server and the client I'm testing.)

The default config on my system is using /etc/shadow, so I specified to 
include shadow in /var/yp/Makfile, but my client system is still not getting 
passwords (I can't ypcat shadow and when I try to login as a user from the 
server, I get an "Authentication service cannot retrieve authentication 
info." error message).  I did "ps -ax" and found this line:

/usr/sbin/rpc.yppasswdd -D /etc -e chsh

But in a howto (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/NIS-HOWTO/ypserv.html), it says to 
start rpc.yppasswdd with:

rpc.yppasswdd -s /etc/yp/shadow -p /etc/yp/passwd -e chsh

So here's my main concern: If I change the line in /etc/init.d/nis from the 
first line listed to the 2nd line, will it get clobbered at some point during 
a system update from apt-get?

Is this the best way to fix this, or is there some better way to either merge 
the passwd and shadow file (I've heard it might not be a good idea to use 
shadow passwords for NIS)?  And why is it that when I have this line in the 
Makefile:

ALL =   passwd shadow group hosts rpc services netid protocols netgrp

(also, later is the line "ALL += shadow")

the shadow file is not passed on?  (I also tried it first without "shadow" in 
the first line.)

Thanks for any help on this.

Hal