Comment 4 for bug 1024290

In brief term, you first need a NIS environment. That is, a network with a NIS server and clients that are configured to use NIS for passwd and group, etc.

What you mostly see in NIS environments is that filesystems are NFS mounts, for example /home or /usr/users or whatever.

Possibly you can do this all on one machine, for testing purpose.

If this is all up and running then login from a client, using a login that is not defined local but on the NIS server.