Login Slowness

Hi Folks

My Sun Solaris servers are waiting for a long time after keying in the User-ID. There is a big delay in getting to the password prompt. But once the password is keyed in,it goes through in a second.

The servers in which i am facing this issue is an NIS client. But i am facing this issue for Local users also.

Any idea what the issue is and how it can be resolved?

The /etc/nsswitch.conf file has the passwd variable like below:

passwd: files nis

Thanks
HG

Do the last few lines of your passwd file contain something like "+:::" or start with a plus sign? If so, it's checking the NIS tables twice. The reason for the slowness might be the (1) identd daemon, (2) the reverse-lookups (see resolv.conf and see that the remote host has a reverse-IP map) (3) /etc/hosts.allow/hosts.deny files.

There might be other causes, but I think these are the most common.

Hi Otheus,

No,My /etc/passwd file doesn't have this "+:::" at the end of the file.
Nor do i find any issues with /etc/hosts.allow/deby file.

Yes,as you said this could be a DNS issue as i find that ping to hostnames are responding but taking a lot of time.
But,What should i check for from DNS server end? Can you please help me on this statement -(2) the reverse-lookups (see resolv.conf and see that the remote host has a reverse-IP map) ?

Note -I am facing this issue in only 4 of my servers(from a farm of around 30).These 4 servers are in a separate VLAN.

Thanks
HG

Right -- you could be having routing issues, not resolver issues. First, check your route table (route -n or netstat -rn) and see that your default gateway is only 1 hop away (it can be more, but then you need a route to it).

Check also /etc/resolv.conf and make sure it matches that of a properly-running machine.

On a properly-running machine, try "dig -x IPADDRESS" for both machines (the client and the improperlyconfigured server). You should get named addresses for both. If not, you need to fix the dns server. If so, try the same on the server to make sure it sees the same info.

Hi Otheus

Wanted to thank you for your valuable suggestions.
Also wanted to let you know that the slowness issue got better after i copied all entries(around 600) in /etc/inet/hosts file to /etc/inet/ipnodes and changed the hosts and ipnodes parameters in nsswitch.conf file to look in files,dns.

I read this somewhere and thankfully it worked.
But didn't really understand how this has resolved(not quite fully) my issue.Any thoughts on this?

Thanks
HG

Post the output of

time ypcat hosts >/dev/null

Then try "getent" instead of ypcat.

Hi otheus,

sorry for the delay.
Pasting the requested output:

[8]d08083: time ypcat hosts >/dev/null
real 0m0.05s
user 0m0.00s
sys 0m0.03s
mumux101 @ /users/d08083
[9]d08083: time getent hosts > /dev/null
real 0m0.01s
user 0m0.01s
sys 0m0.00s
mumux101 @ /users/d08083
[10]d08083:

May i know what you are trying to achieve/convey?

Thanks
HG

Hrm. Well, the problem didn't seem to be directly related to the hosts-lookup function.