CDE login problem

[Walter Prior]

Dear helper,

I am facing a strange problem with my rp5470 server (HP-UX 11).
After comission it using an ignite from a similar system when I try to login using reflection it takes about 4 min. for the user to access the X desktop.
Only with user root gets the access instantly.
I'm using NIS, but I've copy the /etc/passwd and /etc/group from the nis server to the local filesystem. Checked premissions and ownerships, all looks ok. Under the users home directory I've checked .dt for the logs, but they don't anything relevant.

Thanks in advance,
Walter Prior

[Armin Feller]

If that occur only the first time the user logged in and each further login works faster, then clean following files:

# > /etc/utmp
# > /etc/utmpx

Hope that helps.

Regards ...
Armin

[Alex Glennie]

perhaps looking at Rx's log files or even better making use of its trace facility may give you some clues as to where the delay resides .... do they have the same problem telnetting via RX ot the rp5470 ?

[Walter Prior]

Hi,

The problem happens whenever a user tries to login, not only on the first login.
About rhe telnet connection or rlogin, they are very fast and work OK. Only with grafical login I find a problem.

Thanks again,
Walter

[Pete Randall]

Where are the users home directories and how are they specified? Are they NFS?

Pete

[Alex Glennie]

one other suggestion : add set -x in $HOME/.dtprofile and attempt to login to CDE,
check whilst awaiting the CDE session the contents of $HOME/.dt/startlog .....

[Walter Prior]

Yes, the users home diorectories are mounted trough NFS.
the ./dt/startlog dosen't report any error, everything looks OK. It's just the login time that is too long.

[James Murtagh]

Hi Walter,

I think there are too many variables here, an option may be to check from the ground up. For example:

Create a local user, their home directory should not be an HFS mount and don't source their .profile.

If this is ok, start with sourcing his profile and retry, then add them to NIS. If this is still ok move their home directory to the NFS mount.

I was working on a similar issue yesterday and strangely this only affected users who were using the posix shell, if all else fails to lead to a conclusion you may want to try changing one of the users shell to ksh and retry.

Regards,

James.

[Walter Prior]

I have created a user localy and still I come across the same delay problem.
What else can I do ???
Thanks for your help,
Walter

[Alex Glennie]

the "similar system" did the users have CDE customisations at all eg remote actions etc ?

can you post the startlog output .... I was hoping you would have viewed it's contents during the hang so we could guage where the users CDE session was having trouble .... i didn't expect to see errors since the session does start in the end .... this imho opinion is worth persuing !

[Walter Prior]

Hi James,

I believe your advice was very good for the troubleshooting.
I created a user and a new local (/home1) directory and this user dosen't have any problem loging in.
To my understanding it should then be a NFS problem, because all the other users (but root) have their home directory mounted on a remote filesystem. I checked the premissions/ownership for the link /home and it looks ok.
The export looks correct and the FS are well mounted.
What else can I check ?

Thanks again

[James Murtagh]

Hi Walter,

I don't think we can discount NIS at this point too. Can you add the user to NIS, keeping their home directory on the local mount point and retry?

Regards,

James.

[Pete Randall]

Walter,

Let's check whether NFS mounted home directories are part of the problem. Try logging in as root and then cd'ing to one of the home directories: cd /nfs/wherever/home/joeblow.

If that takes 4 minutes to get a prompt back, then we've got an NFS issue.

Pete

[Rick Beldin]

A problem that I have seen with long CDE logins involved the use of a locale that invoked a charset that the Xserver didn't have. For HP systems, the default charset is hp-roman8 and if your Xserver doesn't have that charset, it will be forced to search.

To test out this theory, at the CDE login screen, change the language to C.iso88591 or en_US.iso88591. Is this any faster?

If so, then you might want to set up a font server on the HP-UX side and configure your client to use it.

[Walter Prior]

Hi again,

I've created the NIS user with a local home directory in the problematic server and it works perfectly.
I strongly believe that the problem is with NFS !
But what ??? :(

[James Murtagh]

Hi Walter,

I am assuming you are not using autofs from your previous posts, if you are please let me know.

The first thing I would check is my NIC link speed and duplex settings. Use "lanscan" to find the PPA of the interface and then "lanadmin -x ". For example:

# lanscan
Hardware Station Crd Hdw Net-Interface NM MAC HP-DLPI DLPI
Path Address In# State NamePPA ID Type Support Mjr#
8/0/20/0 0x0060B0FDF4A6 0 UP lan0 snap0 1 ETHER Yes 119
# lanadmin -x 0
Current Config = 100 Half-Duplex AUTONEG

As I am using a hub I would expect a half duplex connection. You will need to check this link is configured similarly to the switch ports and the NIC on the NFS server. You can also use "nfsstat -c" to check for any problems, it may be worth attaching that output.

Another gotcha I have seen is when the shell variable HISTFILE is set in the users profile and is located on the NFS mounted home directory. If you find this is the case, change the HISTFILE to point to a local directory and retry.

Regards,

James.

[monasingh_1]

I assume your NIS domain has at least one slave server on each subnet. If not then you should consider this...

[STANLY_1]

Hi

I too faced this problem sometime back.The users home directory was on a NFS mounted filesystem.You can try by setting the command history file, .sh_history ,to a local filesystem and try.In my case this solved the issue.

SJ

[Walter Prior]

Hi again,

I hope the weekend was refreshing and everyone is full of good ideas (it didn't work for me).

About autofs, it is beeing used.
To what concernes the lan card I have it to 100 Full-Duplex AUTONEG.
Do you think this can be a problem ?
My only issue is in the CDE login for users that have NFS mounted directories.
About the .history file, how can I make it point to a local directory, should I create a link ?
In other server (diferent hardware but same role) this file is in the /home (NFS) of the user and there aren't any problems.

Thanks again for your help,
Walter

[Alex Glennie]

Walter

Any chance you could try my earlier suggestion ... since only CDE logins are affected it would be of some help to find out where within the CDE login process the delay occurs ....

as you can see from below it's quite verbose if you add set -x in your .dtprofile first ...

--- Fri Feb 14 13:52:38 GMT 2003
--- /usr/dt/bin/Xsession starting...
--- Xsession started by gdm
--- setting font path...
--- sourcing //.dtprofile...
+ DT_XSESSION_DIR=Xsession.d
+ sort -u
+ [[ -d /etc/dt/config/Xsession.d ]]
+ ls /etc/dt/config/Xsession.d
+ [[ -d /usr/dt/config/Xsession.d ]]
+ ls /usr/dt/config/Xsession.d
+ [ -x /etc/dt/config/Xsession.d/0010.dtpaths -a ( ! -d /etc/dt/config/Xsession.d/0010.dtpaths ) ]
+ [ -x /usr/dt/config/Xsession.d/0010.dtpaths -a ( ! -d /usr/dt/config/Xsession.d/0010.dtpaths ) ]
+ Log sourcing /usr/dt/config/Xsession.d/0010.dtpaths...
+ echo --- sourcing /usr/dt/config/Xsession.d/0010.dtpaths...
+ 1>> //.dt/startlog 2>& 1

[STANLY_1]

HI

You can add the following line in your .profile

HISTFILE=/tmp/.sh_history.$LOGNAME

But it will be better to experiment by trimming the file and see.

Hope it helps

SJ

[STANLY_1]

sorry,u need to export the same

export HISTFILE=/tmp/.sh_history.$LOGNAME

SJ

[Walter Prior]

Hi Alex,

I've posted the startlog, I hope it helps on something.

//Walter

[Alex Glennie]

Walter,

any chance you could :

a) remote login to the rp5470,
cd $HOME/.dt/

b) login via CDE and at hang view the startlog, I'm hoping since there's a delay in CDE login we can see in real time where it occurs by monitoring the startlog, obviously it eventually completes so I'll not be able to see where the delay is occuring.

[Walter Prior]

Hi again Alex,

If I edit the .dtprofile
and add "export XTI_TRACE=0xffff" I get a startlog with the timestamps, maybe this can help. I'm posting it also.

//Walter