Not directly related to Linux, but hopefully the feedback you give might help me to persuade this school I am working with to explore the Linux server route.
At present this school has some 200 oe so XP-Pro based workstations that have a modest but not inadequate spec. At the server end they are running three well speced Xenon based Raid-5 systems. The server software is RM CC3 (Community Connect Three), which is based on Windows Server 2000 with RM's ageing proprietary management / security overlay.
Now here's the problem: Workstations take about 2.5 minutes to boot up to the Login prompt -- apparently the CC3 workstation overlay does loads of checking with the server to implement security settings etc before the user can log in. Now when I say 2.5 minutes to reach a Login prompt ...well that's on a good day. On a bad day this can take a good ten minutes or even longer.
As for the time it takes to get from logging in to being presented with a usable XP 'Start' menu, well this takes at least another two minutes ...again on a good day. In practice it sometimes takes between a quarter-of-an-hour and twenty minutes to get from 'power on' to a usable 'Start' menu.
OK. So the two managed service providers involved in supporting this school's site are playing 'pass the buck'. Meanwhile the school management is gradually waking up to the fact this level of performance isn't actually normal!
So what I want to know from the good members of this list is how long in practice does it take you to boot a networked XP workstation to Logon and thereafter to a usable menu ...talking to either a Linux (Samba) server or a Windows 2000 / 2003 server? Note that all users of this school network use 'roaming profiles'.
Also if anyone on this list can get access to a RM CC3 based network, what sort of boot / logon / Start Menu times are you commonly achieving with this setup in practice?
Thanks in advance.
David Bowles
Apologies, I'm new to the mailing list and missed the original e-mail. I can't offer much advice, we neither run Windows 2000/2003 as a backend nor do we run a Samba server, being a Novell based network. The only thing I can comment on is your mentioning of roaming profiles. In our experience under win2k and XP-Pro, which are used cross-campus on all client machines, log in times are pretty bad when roaming profiles are used. We did a check around on the users home directories at the profile directory and discovered these averaged between 50mb and 150mb, depending on the range of programs the student used in lessons. Being academia, we've got 20+ people logging in at the same time point, near the start of a lesson, and there is no way you can pass that much info out with any great speed to that many clients immediately. We can theoretically have anywhere up to probably 280 class-room machines logging in within the same 5 minute time slot, that's at best 13gb of data we're throwing around every period! Needless to say when as soon as we switched roaming profiles off we found the logging in sped up phenomenally. Other than faster log-ins we haven't had any comments from either the staff nor the students about any loss of functionality, so we figure they can't actually be missing their profiles all that much. Paul Graydon Network Technician mailto:graydpau@hhc.ac.uk ; http://www.hhc.ac.uk The human mind is like an umbrella, it functions best when open.