10.5 server + client loginwindow starts too fast (again)

Hi Everyone, would really appreciate your help on this one.

Brand new 10.5 server with 4 x brand new 10.5 clients (mac mini’s)

using Open directory server to manage the machines prefs via MCX to create a “Bed and Breakfast” environment. Have the DHCP discover LDAP settings on. All users login, gets MCX preferences and everything is hunky dorey.

I then want to acheive autologin for network users. I figured this would be easy, but seemingly not.

I set the autologin in system prefs by logging in as the network user I want, then auth’ing system prefs as a local admin and setting the autologin to the network user – on reboot I’m faced with the user/password prompt, which changes to the list of users (I set that in computer prefs in WGM) with about 30 seconds.

I’ve had this issue before with list of users not coming up straight away, and had “workarounds” for both 10.3 and 10.4
10.3 involved adding Network requirement to the StartupParameters.plist for loginwindow
10.4 was generally gauging how long it took to come up and adding a “sleep {seconds}” to /etc/rc.local on the clients. It’s a dirty hack, but simple and effective.

obviously 10.3 fix won’t work for leopard, and the 10.4 seems to make no difference (If i add sleep 60 for example, the startup time doesn’t differ from it not being there)

So I figured, maybe mobile accounts is the was to go. setup the users accounts to create mobile accounts, logged in, accepted and setup autologin with those accounts as above.

This method works and autologsin, but now ignores the MCX settings for these users, again implying it logs in before the LDAP has been queried.

This has got me tearing my hair out, please can someone advise me of a way of slowing down loginwindow in leopard?

thanks in advance

– Scott Aubrey