Automount Failures in the Mac Labs

• Sometimes, the NIS server and the Mac lab machines connection to each other can become confused and time out. This can happen at any time the machines are on but not logged into, usually while just sitting at the login screen.
• This glitch is not the fault of the NIS server, but an effect of the Mac machines initiating a connection to the NIS server and timing that connection out before the server can have time to respond and complete an NIS bind.
• To fix this problem, merely restart the affected system and at boot, we made a script run that extends the initial NIS bind to the server and usually remedies this situation.

• If none of these steps work, do the following:
  • Login Problems:
    • check ypwhich for a valid domain
    • check lookupd -q passwd.byname
      • if incorrect, kill -HUP (lookupd pid)
  • Home Directory not mounting
    • check lookupd -q mounts.byname
      • if incorrect, kill -HUP (lookupd pid) and then kill -HUP (automount/Servers pid)

• • Also purge temporary files in the /cis and /dirs directories on the local hard disk.

-- ChasePutnam - 17 Aug 2007