Network user accounts taking FOREVER to wake from sleep

[Ben Kei]

Does anybody know why a network user account sometimes takes (what seems like) an eternity to wake from sleep?

In my office it is customary for us to put our computers to sleep if we're away from them for a while, it saves people seeing things they shouldn't or doing things they shouldn't.

Now I have both a Mac and a PC at my desk, the PC is fine with this and is also a network user machine. The Mac (Quad G5 - 10.4.7) will sometimes wake from sleep and present me the password box immediately, other times it'll take upwards of 3-5 minutes to respond. I'll just get the spinning beachball and eventually the login screen.

Now if it did this all the time then I'd be less concerned but it's maybe 50/50 which makes me think there must be some way of avoiding it.

Any ideas?

 

[MacsRgr8]

Does it only occur when a networked-user is logged in?

Maybe the local admin could login for you, and check to see that it never occurs while being logged in locally.
Then, you could also try to find out if more networked-users experience the same issue.

I have supported an setup many Open Directory (Mac OS X Server) based network-users, and have never ecnountered this problem.
Are you connected to an Active Directory, perhaps?

 

[Ben Kei]

Thanks for replying.

To be honest I couldn't tell you what type of network user I am, I wasn't aware there were multiple types.

I can tell you roughly what our setup is though.

We have around 20 users all with our home directories held in the xserve so that we can access our account on any machine in the office.

If there is a way to reprot what type of network user I am then could you tell me how to retrieve that info?

Basically, my machine is set to ask for password when it wakes up.. before it had to authenticate.. i.e. wake from sleep without a password it was fine.
If the mac falls asleep and I wake it quickly then no problem, it'll present me with a login screen straight away.

If, for example, I go to lunch and manually put it to sleep, then maybe every other time I go to wake it up from sleep (around an hour later) it'll take minutes rather than seconds to present me with the logic screen.

Thanks

 

[MacsRgr8]

Tnx for the info.

As your home folders are shared by an Xserve, your network environment will very probably be the default Mac OS X Open Directory structure, where your home folders are shared via Apple's own AFP sharing protocol.... meaning: best setup!


It seems that your Mac during sleep loses the connection to the authentication server (which is the Xserve where the user information is stored in Open Directory) after aome time, which is logical.
That means that your Mac has to start all the network protocols, then try to re-authenticate to the Open Directory (because of the password required), when waking up after a "longer" sleep.

But, it shouldn't take minutes, IMHO. Maybe 30 secs orso should do the trick.

Can you confirm that other Macs on the same network experience the same problem if you login with your account on that other Mac?
And if you login your Mac with the local-admin account (ask your System Administrator for this), does it then also occur?
Does turning Airport off help in any way?