[johnkharrison]

I have seen some “locking” issues with one of our Network Apps that is shared by Mac OS X and Windows 98 clients. The program is “Scholastic Reading Counts” and it has a centralized DB that records student progress on the file server when the clients take a quiz. The only fix seems to be to restart the Mac server and the files are unlocked for a few days. The database runs OK for a few days and then students get locked out again. I have tried turning oplock on and off and used the DB for a few days, but that doesn’t fix it. But then again, the Reading Counts program hasn’t really impressed me with how well or robust it is coded and designed either…

[johnkharrison]

We have this problem on 10.2.8 server. I tell the users to move an icon on their desktops, or refresh a window, change the view or something and they show up. Actually- we didn’t have this problem with ASIP, but I have never seen it add new files from clients in real time (at least through the GUI) without a refresh or toggle of one of the windows.

[johnkharrison]

The Cisco LEAP authentication works great- after boot up. But the issue seems to be getting the username and password to bind to the client machines so that automounts can happen for roaming profiles. Panther does not have the option for saving the username and password in the keychain for LEAP authentication. So yes, I can utilize RADIUS with local logins, but I have not figured out how to utilize RADIUS with networked home folders. Is there a way to bind a username and password to a client machine so that the machine automatically authenticates to RADIUS at boot?

The Windows users aren’t authenticated until they put in their passwords and usernames- but due to the nature of User folders’ automounts, that isn’t going to work for the Macs.

I also tried putting username and password in brackets That seems to work on Jaguar, but somewhat intermittently.

Also– interestingly enough- The only vendor wireless products supported by Cisco Access Radius Server is Apple and Cisco. Lucked out on that one….

[johnkharrison]

So I can run DNS off my OS X parent server and it won’t conflict with the existing DNS in our domain? I’m willing to try it. Any recommendations for the configuration?

[johnkharrison]

hmmm…
dig indicates:

;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 2
;; flags: qr aa; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUERY SECTION:
;; 69.1.12.10.in-addr.arpa, type = ANY, class = IN

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
10.in-addr.arpa. 1W IN SOA prisoner.iana.org. hostmaster.root-servers.org. (
2002040800 ; serial
30M ; refresh
15M ; retry
1W ; expiry
1W ) ; minimum

;; Total query time: 438 msec

[johnkharrison]

We have advanced logins.. Password server.

[johnkharrison]

According to my PC IT guy counterpart, we have reverse and forward DNS in our school. However, I didn’t set it up and it is running on an older Win NT 4.5 Servers. I am no NT or DNS expert, but from what I can tell it is doing what it should be. The NT server is assigning client machines DNS names- as well as the servers. Is there anything in particular I can check to verify that it is in fact configured and functioning correctly?I can look on the NT server and make setting changes if necessary.

I do not have DNS running from the OS X servers because I did not want to conflict with the NT DNS setup.

In addition to the wireless “slowdown”- I’m not seeing the login problems through 100baseT wired connections on desktop machines so much. The dual533 servers are still slightly faster on logins, globally speaking.

[johnkharrison]

I haven’t seen any file locking issues where I work… However, the Windows clients don’t see folders with spaces before the file name or any special characters on folders or files stored on the Mac OS X server side. However, I am in a school and most of the files being shared are pretty standard- Office files, images, filemaker databases, etc….

[johnkharrison]

I am in the same boat. I have a four server setup- one parent/directory server and three child servers. all servers are maxed out with RAM and are dual processor models (1.4GHZ parent, 800MHZ child, 2X533MHZ child) The parent server is getting heavy CPU usage from AFP with around 130 users. The other servers have about 45 users logged in at one time with acceptable levels on the CPU. I have group folders and users distributed pretty evenly according to the processing power of each server. The entire netinfo directory has about 1000 users total for a school with about 650 “real” users.

Ironically, the dual 533 servers are mounting shares and homes as well as fully logging in up to a minute faster than the 800 and the 1.4 GHZ servers are with their repective users. I am having a very tough time with networked home folders and automounts through wireless. We have a mixed Airport Extreme and Cisco Aironet 350 Series WEP network channeled accordingly and named with the same SSID. When walking around the school with a local user login on a client iBook- the signal strength is more than adequate and machines are retaining DHCP IP addresses wherever they roam. However; logging in through wireless as a networked user is nightmarish. Authentication is unacceptably slow- taking up to 4 minutes per log in. In some instances, MCX prefs are binding, but group shares and home folders are not always mounting. My “new” improved setup is twice as slow as OS 9.22 with Foolproof Control Server. My 1.4GHZ DP G4 parent server stopped authenticating last Tuesday afternoon and needed a restart. Logs indicated no serious error…?!@

This is not what I was expecting. How would we cache Safari to the local HD on a networked user? for Office? It is too late now to reimage the school….

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