> I suspect that, even if the root account is local, it still needs to access
> NIS to know to which groups it belongs.

That was it. But why doesn't this work?

group:          files nis [unavail=return]
passwd:         files nis

If I remove "nis [unavail=return]" from group: then I get instant login.
With the above settings I'm still getting yp_client timeouts (I only
waited two timeout messages).

Martti