Comments on: Mac OS X and NIS … just not good friends

By: Matthias Scheler

Matthias Scheler — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:45:26 +0000

I have found a solution in the meantime: using LDAP instead of NIS. I have written a script (which I will publish after some cleanup) that automatically replicates the relevant NIS maps into the database of an OpenLDAP server. Ever since my Mac uses LDAP as the directory service and works like a charm.

By: Cameron

Cameron — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:32:18 +0000

Please know how appreciative I am of your script! It is the closest thing I have found to a solution. I have increased from 25 to 45.

By: Matthias Scheler

Matthias Scheler — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:21:02 +0000

Please try increasing the delay (the “25″ argument) and see whether that helps. I’m not claiming the script is perfect. But it is able to fix the problem most of the time on my Mac.

By: Cameron

Cameron — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 05:30:23 +0000

I have 20 machines I run NIS/NFS on and was hopeful that this script would do the trick….Alas, no. I run exactly has stated, via /etc/rc.local with the script running out of /usr/loca/sbin/fix-nis.

1/3 of the systems still freeze at the login screen

By: Nugget

Nugget — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:29:40 +0000

Well, for better or for worse this will not be a problem in OS X Leopard. Apple has removed lookupd entirely from 10.5.

By: toxic

toxic — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:39:45 +0000

Yes I will. But I can’t login as admin atm

By: Matthias Scheler

Matthias Scheler — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:13:07 +0000

That sounds exactly like the problem that my script fixes for me. Could you perhaps give it a try?

By: toxic

toxic — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:53:50 +0000

I’m using NIS and NFS and I have the same problem. My login window kept on freezing.. alot.. I tried not to let my mac go into sleep mode, and that helped, but now I got another problem. Sometimes the login window just shakes when I try to login, as if I enter a wrong password, but I’m 100% sure that it’s the right password (sometimes both the local admin account and the “Other” account freezes and sometimes just one of those does). I have also installed a program called unlockudp.
I took a look in the system log and this message is printed (both in lookupd and DirectoryService): NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local

By: iain

iain — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 12:27:06 +0000

You should probably do The Right Thing and create a launchd rule for your script instead of rc.local! At least until Apple come up with ANOTHER reinvention of service management.

By: Matthias Scheler

Matthias Scheler — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 13:49:46 +0000

When I told Stephen Borrill about the NFS over TCP performance problem during last Friday’s NetBSD meeting in Cambridge he told me that similar performance problems occur with (NetBSD) Samba servers. Tuning the TCP stack under Mac OS X by setting the kernel parameter “net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack” to zero fixes this problem.

After making that change on my Power Mac G5 the performance of NFS over TCP went up to 25MB/Sec.