Users take 5 mins to login!

[miamibeach]

We had an odd problem now we are are os x server 10.3.6 and clients 10.3.6 where the users couldnt see the home folders on login. We had to remove the mcx cache and then the user accounts seem to login fine.

Although it now takes around 4-5 mins to login! We know the networks fine, and it all worked a week ago. So we can only think its the 10.3.6 update.
Anybody have any ideas?

[MacRaider]

Hi
We had this same problem, with Windows XP clients taking ages to log in and then even longer to log out. Cured it by using this command on the server`;-

sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0

After this all worked well. Hope it works for you.

MacRaider

[Anonymous]

If your users are managed… try removing all management preferences. If that solves your problem I have your solution. I wrote an applications called iHome that will provide basic management without the slowdown. Email me if you want to know more [email protected]

[MacMan]

This is a follow up regarding the above entry for a solution to slow logins:
I am a server admin in a Colorado school district. I got fed up with MCX managed preferences because of the huge login delay. Yet I still need to be able to restrict items like the dock and finder preferences.

I case you didn’t know, when a user has MCX prefs defined in their open directory user entry they get handled differently on the client side than an unmanaged user. The client reads this MCX entry from the open directory server and applies any managed attributes during login. This all happens via the program MCXCompositor. If you have ever looked at the syslog, MCXCompositor seems to be a bit error happy. The obvious solution would be to remove the MCXCompositor from the picture by turning off managed preferences. But if you are like me you don’t want little hands pulling items out of the dock every 3 seconds. Or you would rather not have the hard drive show up on the desktop.

I have written a simple AppleScript Studio application that pulls preferences from a master user (dock items, menu extras, finder properties. etc) and copies them to a selected group of users. It will also modify some preferences such as : locking the dock, running simple finder, or adding the home directory to the dock. All these preferences are selectable so that you can give users only a new dock or only menu extra items (eg monitors).

I currently have a few schools testing this software and experience login times of 5-10 seconds, even over wireless!

I would like to continue development and release a package that is fully functional (freeware obviously) but I would like to know if this is something that other server admins would be interested in. I would hate work hard creating something that no one will use. Reply and let me know or email [email protected].

Thanks,
Zach

[Anonymous]

Have a possible/probable solution:
Our clients range from X.3.6-X.3.8, Directory server is X.3.8
All but my computer, experienceing 4-5 minute delays.
What’s different…
I have the DNS server IP number specifically in my Network preference pane as our OS X boxes are NOT pulling that from the DHCP server (the OS 9 boxes are, that’s how I got the DNS IP in the first place).
Solution A- in the Directory Utility and LDAPv3 configuration make sure it’s IP NUMBERS, not DNS name and also that way in the Authentication tab- then no stress if DNS number changes, but problem if need to change IP of server.
Solution B- Get the DNS server ip number from your network admin and enter it by hand. This is a system setting and will stay for all users – then no stress if DNS name of server changes, but problem if DNS IP changes.

So I took a user on a G4 450DP running X.3.8 from 4m35s to about 28s by changing the Directory Utility from loginserver.yourdomain.com to 192.192.168.2 (change these to match your own network).
This should help with XP as it doesn’t always grab a DNS from DHCP either.

Hope this helps!
Sara

[Author]

Posts