Considerations for a Non-NFS Environment
In many cases NFS, isn't used to create a centralized home directory for users and, therefore, you'll have to create it on each NIS client and not on the server.
This example creates the home directory for the NIS client, Smallfry. After doing this, you have to copy a BASH login profile file into it and modify the ownership of the directory and all the files to user nisuser.
Logins should proceed normally once this has been done and all the other steps have been followed.
[root@smallfry tmp]# mkdir /home/nisuser
[root@smallfry tmp]# chmod 700 /home/nisuser/
[root@smallfry tmp]# ll /home
total 2
drwx------ 2 nisuser users 1024 Aug 4 08:05 nisuser
[root@smallfry tmp]#
[root@smallfry tmp]# cp /etc/skel/.* /home/nisuser/
cp: omitting directory `/etc/skel/.'
cp: omitting directory `/etc/skel/..'
cp: omitting directory `/etc/skel/.kde'
[root@smallfry tmp]# chown -R nisuser:users /home/nisuser
[root@smallfry tmp]#
 | 