afp_mount hang at login

I have approximately machines that are bound to an AD server. Randomly, when some users log in to the Mac, it will hang on login. That is to say, they can log in, the desktop picture comes up, the Spotlight Icon comes up, but nothing else draws. They are all running 10.4.x.

I tracked the problem to wild afp_mount processes. I can ssh into the machine and sudo killall afp_mount, to fix the problem. Sometimes I need to kill the afp_mount processes that respawn, 3 or 4 times. Other times, this process respawns upto 20-25 times. In any case, when they’ve all been killed, the machine continues to boot normally and is usable.

My Data Center guy says he thinks it’s a kerberos issue. He proved this to me by turning kerberos authentication off temporarily. However, we have a standard for single-sign on, and kerberos needs to be turned on.

I suspect the Mac is trying to mount the afp volumes on the server before it gets the kerberos ticket? Though as I write this, that doesn’t sound right to me.

My question(s) is(are):
Has anyone run into this issue before?
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get this to stop without turning kerberos off?

Any help/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

-Cheech