[Samba] Re: Plea for Help with Slow Roaming Profiles

[Damian Gerow]

Thus spake Dragan Krnic (dkrnic at lycos.com) [12/08/03 14:50]:
> | I've posted a couple of times about this problem.  
> | This is a plea for help with Roaming Profile 
> | configuration.
> |
> | The short problem is that logging on and logging off 
> | takes about ten minutes, with a fresh roaming 
> | profile (~1MB), on a 100Mb LAN.
> | 
> | If anyone has any suggestions or pointers or 
> | questions, *please* pipe up. I'm all out of ideas.
> 
> In the past it was always some detail of network
> configuration that caused such problems. Your WINS is
> not correctly set up, your DNS is not correctly set up,
> your wires are leaky or pass by big electric motors,
> whatever.
> 
> Try it another way. Connect just one client with your
> server with a crossed cable. Do you still have the
> problem? Then do some ethereal sniff and see what is
> causing it. Else, connect more clients via a switch.
> What happens then? Etc. It's always network.

I've tried it with the samba WINS server enabled and disabled.  I've tried
it directly connected, I've tried it with DHCP addresses, I've tried it with
static addresses.  I've tried different accounts on different machines, and
with different operating systems at different patchlevels.  I've watched
logs on both sides (with the little logging that Windows provides), I've
watched network traffic, both on the Samba machine and on another machine
(just in case).  And then I've had someone else do their own
troubleshooting, just in case it was me.

I've done everything that I could possibly think of.  I've tried with and
without various service packs (BTW, Win2kSP4 requires the gpedit
configuration as well), and with and without various hotfixes.  I've even
uninstalled thinks like WMP to see if that was causing problems.

I'd be very, very surprised if it /was/ the network, as we've been using
Samba in a non-Domain setup here for about six months, with zero problems
(other than XP trying to authenticate with EAP).

However, there's some good news: IT'S WORKING!  There's no more delay, and
logons are *immediate*!  (Yes, even with a profile that's 4MB.)

What caused it: the WebClient service.  I turned it off and disabled it
after applying all patches.  All subsequent tests have me logging in in
under 15 seconds, whereas before turning it off it still took the full ten
minutes to log on.

A great big Thanks! goes out to Matthew Scarrow, for suggesting this fix.