Slow boot login/logout without presence of AD server, roming

[passmaster16]

First off, Joel excellent writeup on AD integration. After scouring the net for hours and on the verge of giving up, I came across your site and was able to get my Mac to authenticate with Win 2000 Server with no problem. Apple talks about its seamless integration yet they have no up-to-date documentation on it. I like OS X but Apple has to realize that there are a lot of people that run windows and windows-based servers, being the minority they have to do what they can to make integration easier. In this case, much of the actual software is implemented but documentation is nonexistent.

The config is pretty much identical to your how-to…Running 10.2.6 on an ibook 600 which I use for a test rig. I’m running Windows 2000 Server with Service Pack 3 loaded. It’s a single domain setup with the 2k server being the only domain controller. On the ibook I’m using the local drive as the home storage directory, at least for now (i’m just fooling around with this stuff so forgive me if I sound clueless.)

Anyway, I wanted to try to see how the Mac machines would react if I tried to boot them without the presence of an LDAP/AD server. I simply removed the connection between my Mac and the server. This caused two problems, first I noticed that it took almost 5 minutes to get to the login screen. It would boot to a blue screen with a spinning beach ball for 5 minutes until the login window appeared. I tried logging on to the local account and at first it looked like it was totally locked up. However after waiting about 3-4 minutes, it finally logged me in. Logging out of the account also took a few minutes. The login/logout delays seemed to be sporadic on subsequent attempts. For example, with the network connection still removed, i rebooted the ibook. Again, the login screen didn’t appear for 5 minutes or so. However when I logged into the local account, it went right in this time. I tried logging out and it took me to the blue screen with the spinning beach ball. Again, a few minutes and the login window reappeared.

At this point I reconnected the ibook to the network so the machine could find the 2k server. I then rebooted the ibook. The login window came up with no delay. I tried logging to the local account and it went right in…again no delay. I tried logging out and it went right out with no delay. I repeated that sequence a second time and it was successful without any lag.

So I’m figuring that it is having a problem because the machine is configured to go out to that AD server but if it’s not there, it chokes. Is there some setting to add for roming users. In other words if I go on a trip and I don’t have an internet connection, is there a way to use my local account normally without having to wait for this thing to boot, login, logout. I would have figured that there is some sort of timeout that can be set so that the machine can look for that AD server and if it can’t find it, use default settings. I don’t know, I’m probably missing it.

Thanks in advance,
-Josh

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