Network home logins slow and hanging

[jose]

We are having a difficult time with our lab and laptop cart machines hanging during the login to network accounts. When we reboot the machines, it will usually be ok. When more students are logging on concurrently, it has a higher failure rate.

The clients are 10.4.7, the home directory server is a 10.4.7 and the OpenDirectory server is 10.4.7.

I’m having very little success tracing the source of the problem. I’m not sure if it’s network related, OD related, AFP related, user home directory or client related. I’ve attempted removing the directory services preference files, reboot, rebind…this doesn’t improve anything. I’ve tried simply resetting passwords along with recreating home directories.

Anyone have some troubleshooting directions that I can follow?

[seekind]

Hi Jose,

do you have a Layer 3 switched environment?

cheers seekind

[ingenious7]

I was having the same problem when we upgraded to 10.4 in 2006. Try this:

Make sure you are logged in with an administrator account.

Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities).

Create a backup of the current NFS Startup script with this command on a single line:

sudo cp /System/Library/StartupItems/NFS/NFS /System/Library/StartupItems/NFS/NFS.bak

Open the NFS Startup Item script for editing with nano by using this command:

sudo nano /System/Library/StartupItems/NFS/NFS

To locate the section of the script that starts automount, press Control-W, type “automounter”, and press Return.

Under the section “Start the automounter,” change the line that reads:

automount -m /Network -nsl -mnt ${AUTOMOUNTDIR}

to read:

automount -1 -m /Network -nsl -mnt ${AUTOMOUNTDIR}

Change the line that reads:

automount -m /automount/Servers -fstab -mnt /private/Network/Servers \

to read:

automount -1 -m /automount/Servers -fstab -mnt /private/Network/Servers \

Save the file (Control-O, Return), and exit nano (Control-X).

Reboot.

[Author]

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