[comp.unix.ultrix] 20 seconds to login at console??

connie@psych.Stanford.EDU (Constance Stillinger) (08/21/90)

Lately, my ds3100 (ultrix 3.1, dxwindows) has been taking
about 19 seconds to log me in on the console, even though
there's nothing much else going on (i.e. I'm the only user).

I recall that in the past others have reported login problems --
could someone email me with a description (and solution, if
there was one)?  I'd be happy if someone just forwarded me all
the postings relevant to this.  Thanks!

Connie

Constance Stillinger
connie@psych.stanford.edu  (Now ass't prof. at Northwestern Univ.)
-------

jstewart@ncs.dnd.ca (John Stewart) (08/21/90)

In article <1210@psych.stanford.edu> connie@psych.Stanford.EDU (Constance Stillinger) writes:
>
>Lately, my ds3100 (ultrix 3.1, dxwindows) has been taking
>about 19 seconds to log me in on the console, even though
>there's nothing much else going on (i.e. I'm the only user).
>
>I recall that in the past others have reported login problems --
>could someone email me with a description (and solution, if
>there was one)?  I'd be happy if someone just forwarded me all
>the postings relevant to this.  Thanks!

I'm posting, because I have not read this newsgroup until recently.
I had the same problem with a couple of microvaxen running 3.0 and
3.1. 

To make a long story very short, I installed BIND 4.8.1 over the
standard ultrix bind (4.7.3?) I ftp'd the bind from uunet.uu.net.

This cured our login problems.

I'd be interested in hearing a summary of what others have found.

John Stewart
jstewart@ncs.dnd.ca

connie@psych.Stanford.EDU (Constance Stillinger) (08/22/90)

Much to my surprise, this nasty behavior stopped when my local
mail gateway/nameserver/etc. came back up and started behaving
itself again (after a recent thunderstorm).

I didn't think this could be the source of login problems,
especially at the console, but it seems like more than a
coincindence.

Any comments from people more knowledgeable than I?  What kinds
of flaky behavior can I expect from my workstation when my gateways and nameservers
freak out?


Constance Stillinger
connie@psych.stanford.edu  (Now ass't prof. at Northwestern Univ.)
-------

iglesias@orion.oac.uci.edu (Mike Iglesias) (08/22/90)

In article <1213@psych.stanford.edu> connie@psych.UUCP (Constance Stillinger) writes:
>
>Much to my surprise, this nasty behavior stopped when my local
>mail gateway/nameserver/etc. came back up and started behaving
>itself again (after a recent thunderstorm).
>
>I didn't think this could be the source of login problems,
>especially at the console, but it seems like more than a
>coincindence.
>
>Any comments from people more knowledgeable than I?  What kinds
>of flaky behavior can I expect from my workstation when my gateways and nameservers
>freak out?

It all depends on what happens when you log in.  If your system has to
do any hostname<->ip address translations, it's going to try using the
first nameserver in your /etc/resolv.conf file.  If it doesn't get
an answer from that one, it will try any others (if more than one is
listed) in order.  If you have your system setup via /etc/svcorder
(/etc/svc.conf in Ultrix 4.0) to use BIND first and then LOCAL, it
will look in your /etc/hosts file when it can't contact a nameserver.
If your nameservers are on the other side of a gateway and the gateway
is down, it will take a while to resolve the hostnames (it usually tries
for about 5-10 seconds per nameserver).

If you're mounting partitions from a fileserver on the other side of
the gateway, then you'll get NFS server not responding messages, and
depending on whether the partition is mounted hard or soft it will
keep trying (hard) or give up eventually (soft).

You could change the order that you look for hostnames to local, bind
so that it looks in /etc/hosts first.  The danger there is that if one
of your "necessary" hosts changes it's IP address and you don't change
the hosts file, you'll have problems contacting that host.


Mike Iglesias
University of California, Irvine
Internet:    iglesias@orion.oac.uci.edu
BITNET:      iglesias@uci
uucp:        ...!ucbvax!ucivax!iglesias

che_wgp@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Geoffrey A Prentice) (08/22/90)

In article <1213@psych.stanford.edu> connie@psych.UUCP (Constance Stillinger) writes:
>
>Much to my surprise, this nasty behavior stopped when my local
>mail gateway/nameserver/etc. came back up and started behaving
>itself again (after a recent thunderstorm).
>
>I didn't think this could be the source of login problems,
>especially at the console, but it seems like more than a
>coincindence.

The problem is definitely related  to the network activities.
It took me about 30 seconds just to get the login prompt at
the console when a new PC network was tested and attached to
the ethernet.

Any comments from DEC?

X. Shan
shan@sphunix.sph.jhu.edu