Intel macs hand during boot, anyone else?

[jkonrad]

Am I the only one with this problem?

I have 16 eMacs running 10.4.7, 45 old iMacs running 10.3.9, and 12 Intel iMacs running 10.4.7. All work great [b]except[/b] the Intel iMacs.

All computers were first bound to a windows 2003 AD server for user authenication. AD also tells the Macs where to find the user’s home directories. These are found on an old Mac G4 server running 10.4.7.

At this point a student could login to any machine and all would work. All machines could also reboot properly.

Then I built a new Mac server running 10.4.7 and made it an OD master. It is not bound to the AD. I then bound all the lab computers to the OD. They were put into groups and I started to manage settings. All computers continued work well, untill I had to reboot some.

Now, the problem: the Intel Macs will hang during boot.

Sometimes I will have to force shut them off, and turn them on four or five times before they continue to the login screen. If they do make it, all works as expected.

Where do I start when trying to fix this? What logs do I check? Why is it only the Intel iMacs?

[anodyne]

Try giving this a whirl … System Preferences > Network > Network Port Configurations; put your primary port config at the top (disable remaining ports if possible, prioritize at the very least). If wireless, I would establish/join your access point, then set AirPort configuration to “join preferred” and click your heels 3x 🙂

The above resolved this particular issue with Intel iMacs we recently received (also bound to AD/OD). Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing others probs ranging from anemic AFP services (have done some tuneage, now just pray for a 10.4.8 update than includes 10.4.7 Uni changes), crashing apps (using Network Homes), and now less than consistent MCX application dabbling with Portable Homes. Good times! Why do I long for the 10.3.x days (Thanks Michael!)?

Curtis

[jkonrad]

Thanks. This did not seem to help, but it was nice to get a response! Thanks.

Jon

[anodyne]

Sorry to hear that didn’t help with the issue. We did that at one of our sites to resolve the boot issue. One other thing that I can think of …. the “Add DHCP-supplied LDAP servers to automatic search policies” should not be checked if you are not handing out that info. via DHCP. This shouldn’t be checked by default, but I came accross a machine that had that set and was taking a great deal of time to boot. Best of luck and please post solution when things are corrected. Thanks much!

[Ross]

I would say its a 10.3.9 and Tiger that is the difference and not Intel macs. Did you check the logs or do Single user mode to see where its hanging. A lot has changed in the AD plug-in since 10.39, maybe if you described your setup a bit more it would help… SMB home dirs? Network homes or local cached user with home mounting? OD master is for managing prefs?

[jkonrad]

19 eMacs running 10.4.7.
12 Intel iMacs running 10.4.7

All users log in against an AD server (Windows 2003) and an OD server (OS X server 10.4.7). Their home directories are on a different OS X server running 10.4.7 and are mounted via AFP.

It is not a 10.4.7 issue since all 19 eMacs with any user at any time can restart successfully everytime, all the time with out problem. However, the Intel machines when restarted by a user, by a power failure, or by a Remote Desktop command will hang on restart about 50% of the time.

This only occurs on Intel Machines, and only when they are configured in directory services to authenticate first to AD, then to OD. Thanks for the interest, but it is clearly something about the Intel version of 10.4.7, or a mistake in my configuration, but not a 10.3 vrs 10.4 issue since it does not occur with 10.4 on eMacs.

Jon

[Ross]

I missed that you said you had other 10.4.7 machines. Try verbose mode and see where its hanging (Command, V on boot). Check the consol logs and see if you have any strange system errors on boot. One of this has to tell you whats going on… I have only seen these hangs when DNS is messed up or directory services. Was this an image or all machines configured the same?

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