Occasional log in issues, some machines, not others

[ChurchillBlair]

Some of my users are getting the dreaded

“Unable to log in as user “X” at this time. Logging into account failed because an error occured. The home folder is located on an AFP or SMB server. Please contact your System Admin”

message, usually in the early morning, when most of them are trying to log in at around the same time. This only seems to happen on a handful of machines scattered around my building, and has been pretty much driving me crazy trying to diagnose the issue.

The only helpful tips I’ve found in the Apple d-boards are “check your DNS” and that I should check my “network performance” — generally, if the users wait a while, they are able to log in later. This makes me think there is something going on with my network, ie: network traffic spikes, since I believe a lot of users are trying to all log in around the same time. I heard from another sys-admin that he’d seen a fix for 10.3 that had you edit the LoginWindow StartupParameter.plist but unfortunately I can’t find that file in 10.4as it isn’t in the location the help specified (/System/Library/StartupItems/LoginWindow/StartupParameters.plist) – is this still used in Tiger?

I’m using a XServe as OD Master (LDAP/authentication), DHCP and DNS, and have three XServes that house my user home directories – I have 600 users in my LDAP directory, and about 350 machines (mostly eMacs, some G5 and Intel iMacs) in use. The servers are running 10.4.10, as are the clients.

Does anyone have any suggestions for where I should start besides RTFM?

Any help is appreciated – thanks

Blair

[pingu]

Is the fileserver hosting the home directories a different server from the Open Directory master?

If so, check the time differences between client and ODM and server and ODM.

Otherwise, check for fast user switching, only one user at a time can log in using an NHD

Sorry if you’ve seen these responses before

[premiermac]

We fixed it by putting a line at the end of /etc/rc.common that says “rm -Rf /Library/Caches/*

Somehow, that fixed it for us on 10.3.x clients. Never had a problem since. It doesn’t seem to have caused any other problems.

[ChurchillBlair]

RE: Pingu, [b]actually[/b] yeah, it looks like the file servers (they are separate from the ldap server) are all slightly out of time sync with the OD Master server…

They’re all supposed to be getting time from time.apple.com – is there any way to get them back into sync with [b]each other[/b] as well?

(and no, FUS is not enabled)

RE: premiermac, we’re running 10.4.10 on client and server… does tiger client still use the same startup functions?

thanks guys

Blair

[premiermac]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: ChurchillBlair[/u][p]

RE: premiermac, we’re running 10.4.10 on client and server… does tiger client still use the same startup functions?

thanks guys

Blair
[/p][/QUOTE]

Yes indeed, you can modify /etc/rc.common in 10.4.11.

[ChurchillBlair]

I have a few things cached there that I think I actually need, like my anti-virus updates and a custom icon for the Administrator account, which I found out by trashing the contents on a test machine…

The problem is that since this AFP/SMB error occurs unpredictably, even if I do trash the /Library/Caches/ contents, I don’t know whether or not it will do anything for me.

I’ll try it out on a classroom that has been having the problem recently with more regularity, but does anyone have any other suggestions?

[ChurchillBlair]

Dave,
I think we have a few things cached there that I think I actually need, like my anti-virus updates and a custom icon for the Administrator account, which I found out by trashing the contents on a test machine… that and if I trash the contents of that folder, my users lose a lot of their icons (ie: MS Word files turn to a black unix-window icon), so presumably the user icon caches are there as well?

The problem is that since this AFP/SMB error occurs unpredictably, even if I do trash the /Library/Caches/ contents, I don’t know whether or not it will do anything for me.

I’ll try it out on a classroom that has been having the problem recently with more regularity, but does anyone have any other suggestions?

[premiermac]

Huh, well, we haven’t had any issues with that stuff, since the local user caches are in the User homes on the server. I’m surprised at the Word icon issue that you have.

Since simply clearing that out fixed our issues, we never dissected it further to see precisely what we needed to delete.

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