Newbie question with ftpd. Please help!!

Hi all, I'm a linux newbie. installed Suse v 7.1 and i cant get the ftp daemon up. i downloaded the latest version of proftpd and installed it. can manage to get it up using inetd, could get it up as a standalone service by pointing proftpd to the proftpd.conf file. also noticed that i can't create any users/groups using the UI. it cant find the following files: /etc/yppasswd /etc/ypgroup they dont exist in the file system. any help would be appreciated. thx. db