Since a few months I have been unable to generate new /etc/spwd.db and 
/etc/pwd.db. Whenever I use a command that rewrites these files by 
calling pwd_mkdb (vipw, passwd etc) the files produced will not pull in 
yp support correctly. 

Forward lookups seem to work correctly, but the reverse will not, i.e. 
typing 'ls -l ~david' returns all files as owned by 1207, not by david. 
If I replace the earlier files everything works as usual again.

This is getting somewhat annoying as I am unable to change the root 
password. Is this a known problem? Does it have a workaround?

Peter