SUMMARY: removing clients from NIS domain

Thanks to Tim Cutts, James Sainsbury, Johan Brusche, Thomas Blinn and 
Dirk Kleinhesselink.

The simplest set of steps is:

1.  Make sure you have a complete passwd and group file local to the
machine.
2.  /sbin/init.d/nis stop
3.  Edit /etc/rc.config.common to:

NIS_CONF="NO"

4. simultaneously shutdown -h now on old master server, with shutdown 
-r now on client
5. when client comes back up it is a free standing machine.

That appears to be all that is absolutely necessary.  There were some 
suggestions about modifying /etc/svc.conf as well and also some 
fuller edits of rc.config.common, but these things did not appear to 
be absolutely necessary.

thanks to all

Derek