Help im in deep ! Slow login problems

[mactech03]

Hey all,

 

Well it seems ive gotten a bit over my head. I have an xserve (early 08) with 3 750gb sas drives in a raid 5 4 gb of ram. This server is used to login students and teachers (roughly 500 users although probably only about 90 login at once). Im experiencing odd speed issues although 1 lab seems to work great for some reason and having a hard time figuring out what to look for on the server as far as what could be causing the slowness issues. All users are network account users and with the exception of the 1 lab that works fine it takes 3-4 minutes to login. The server is currently running os 10.5.5. Any help or pointing me in the right direction would be appreciated.

 

-Mactech03

[gaz350]

have you tried moving 1 of the machines to the lab that works fine?

are the logins 3-4mins no matter how many people are logging in?

 

spec of machine?

lots of managed prefs configured?

any login items?

 

what have you tried?

[mactech03]

Thanks for the reply, I will say it is odd and im not totally convinced but the problem seems to have magically resolved its self, the building that said it was having issues had a max login time of 30 seconds (network user) with the exception of a few computers that are early g4 era. I did take an imac from the working lab and plugged it up at a building that was having issues and guess what? there were no problems at all! And the computers that teachers were complaining about were totally fine.

 

Thank you for your help and assistance, Its been crazy lately. Old equipment is starting to finally fail and its keeping me fairly busy so my brain is about toasted and its good to have a second brain (edugeek users rox)

 

-Mactech03

[krisd32]

^^^^ Spam ??? ^^^^

[DMcCoy]

^^^^ Spam ??? ^^^^

 

Nope

 

As for the login issues, OS X handily reads a great many of it's Library files on login. It's a good idea to redirect the cache folder locally to stop it slowing down when it hits the temporary safari files etc.

 

Other things to look for is spotlight activity which can kill a file server quite quickly when all users login and it begins to index their home folders. I've had to disable it on all machines.

[ZeroHour]

Kris was replying to a spambot post that was removed btw

[HMCTech]

I know this may sound silly but where are the cat 5 cables in relation to the power cables? I know of places that have very slow log ons int he afternoon and it was due to in the afternoon they turn all the lights on and the interferance from teh mains was causing the network slow down.

[DMcCoy]

Kris was replying to a spambot post that was removed btw

 

Aaaaaaaaah

[mactech03]

Nope

 

As for the login issues, OS X handily reads a great many of it's Library files on login. It's a good idea to redirect the cache folder locally to stop it slowing down when it hits the temporary safari files etc.

 

Other things to look for is spotlight activity which can kill a file server quite quickly when all users login and it begins to index their home folders. I've had to disable it on all machines.

 

DMcCoy,

 

I got a call today and finally got more info from my assistant. As it turns out everything is not working all the way. The main problem seems to be random and may be a part of what you have described as the cache folder needing to be redirected. It is completely random. You login as a student and save a file, logout, then try to log back in and you have to wait 5-10 minutes before the student can login again. By the way any help on how to redirect the cache folder would be appreciated.

 

Thank You,

 

Mactech03