You can change the settings of the variables defined at the top of the Makefile by changing the value to the right of the equal sign (=). For instance, if you do not want to use the files located in /etc as input for the maps, but you would rather use files located in another directory, such as /var/etc/domainname, you should change DIR from DIR=/etc to DIR=/var/etc/domainname. You should also change PWDIR from PWDIR=/etc to PWDIR=/var/etc/domainname.
The variables are the following.
DIR= The directory containing all of the NIS input files except passwd and shadow. The default value is /etc. Since it is not good practice to use the files in the master server's /etc directory as NIS input files, you should change this value.
PWDIR= The directory containing the passwd and shadow NIS input files. Since it is not good practice to use the files in the master server's /etc directory as NIS input files, you should change this value.
DOM= The NIS domain name. The default value of DOM is set using the domainname command. However, most NIS commands use the current machine's domain which is set in the machine's /etc/defaultdomain file.