The problem description below is relevant for those who use samba + LDAP. We
installed four
Intel Xeon servers with standard SuSE 8.2, samba + ldap. The W2K client
complained about
very, very, very slow reponse from the server. Below is we descripe the reasons
and the
solution.
We have big problems with openldap version 2.1.12 (standard suse 8.2 rpm) and
the name server
cache daemon versiom 2.3.2 (standard suse 8.2 rpm).
We installed 4 Intel servers (Intel server board, Intel Case, Adaptec 2100S Raid
controller,
Seaget cheetah disks, Xeon 2400, 1 GB RAM. We updated the BIOS, downloaded all
updated
RPM's, etc.
LDAP is used for samba, postfix and courier-imap/pop3. The total configuration
is working fine,
except Openldap/NSCD.
The problem was that a server locked after a while. When is not predictable, but
more users
caused the problem to be sooner. Further analyses learned that LDAP and NSCD
were the
problem. Problems became manifest after addding 3500 account to the LDAP
directory. Server
was not working reliable anymore, the W2K clients went home because of the
malfunction of
the server.
This problem occurred on 4 locations with the same hard- and
softwareconfiguration.
After updating LDAP (removed rpm's and install of latest stable version of
openldap)
problems where not disappeared but less.
It became then clear that nscd was also a problem. The daemon caused the
problem: the
processlist showed that several instances of nscd were running. But one of the
daemons locked
the system: it was not possible to fork a new process. Stopping the nscd caused
a locked
server to run inmediatly as it should and user were inmediatly able to work.
On the four locations the nscd is now stopped for one week and there are no
problems
anymore. For us it is 100% evident that the nscd is a problem, because starting
the daemon again,
sooner or later the server will stop responding (no new processen possible). We
also think that
OpenLDAP 2.1.12 is also not working 100% reliable,
Met vriendelijke groet/Regards,
Prompt
R.J. Baart
Marktveldpassage 35c
5261 ED Vught
Netherlands
Mailto:R.J.Baart@Prompt.NL
Http://WWW.Prompt.NL
Tel.: +31 73 6567041
Fax.: +31 73 6573513
