So you all don’t have to read throug this to know what I’m getting at, I’m basically trying to decrease the login times for all my client machines under Panther & Panther Server. I’m also trying to get a feel for how long it takes users in other Panther & Panther server environments to log into their machines (i.e. if you’re an admin, what are your login times like?). If the environment includes login/logout hooks, that kind of throws things off a bit, but Id’d even like to know about those if at all possible.

So, here’s my setup. I have a single processor 1.6GHz G5 with 1GB RAM, 160 internal HD running OS X Server 10.3.5. All client machines are running OS X 10.3.5. I have some users (around 50), some groups, and all users have networked home directories. Client machines consist of a G5, some iMac G4s, and some PowerMac G4s. They all run over 100/1000 ethernet lines. In some cases a few few few clients are in the same room as the server even. While they aren’t plugged into the same switch, they are on the same subnet.

These clients, from loginwindow.app to Finder.app, take about 30 seconds to log in. I’ve recently tried to lighten the load by removing a large number of the LDAP mappings in Directory Access.app on the clients and even edited the slapd.conf file in /etc/openldap/ to try and create a few more indexes for the OpenLDAP databases.

I’ve found that the LDAP queries take well less than a second to return a result, so there’s really no latency there. Through doing all this work logins are taking about 20-25 seconds now.

So I’m trying to widdle away at the login times more if possible. I’ve had some thoughts of moving the automounted Users directory from being a dynamic link (i.e. clicking on the User Home Directories radio button under the Network Mount tab of Workgroup Manager in the Sharing secion, whew) to a static link in hopes that it would increase responsivness. Nope.

My other thought is that I could move the Users directory to a replica server and go from there, just update the Home Directory LDAP entries in Workgroup Manager to the replica, and have the replica do the automounting, heavy disk I/O, etc. That way the main server could be left to handle the LDAP I/O…. And at this point I hope I’m not making half of you go “huh?”. Of course I’d have to add the replica to the authentication tab in Directory Access.app on the clients, but that’s about all I can think of.

Some of the indexes I created resulted in some “interesting” results that I had to roll back to regain full functionality of course, but now only have about 1/4 of the regular mappings indexed.

So, does anyone a) have any ideas on how to decrease login times (w/o buying new hardware of course) and b) if you have clients with networked home directories, how long does it take your users to log in?

Any help or insight is much appreciated. I’ve been doing the server thing for a while now, but I’m the only Mac guy around my University to use OS X Server as extensive as I do… Alright, later!