I am so sick of the damn beachball...

[iansilv]

And the slow typing in Safari...
And the complaintis from my employees that "the computer is freezing again"
I am running fully updated Sierra on all the clients and the mac mini server to 10.12.13.

I am running network user accounts with AFP sharing on the server.

I even moved file sharing to a separate Synology box.

What is the problem here? Is it simply that network accounts are just not usable? Ha s Apple just stopped supporting them?

Literally, right now my text input is going at about one word per second... As I type this the word "Synology" just appeared above.

I am posting this here because I am hoping some fellow mac Server users can shed some light on what may be the problem here. I rea lly want to have the roaming directory concept so anyone can user any computer in the office. Is this possible without using mac osx server?

 

[belvdr]

How about some detailed info about how things are configured, such as network topology, hardware versions, software configuration, etc?

It sounds like the system is either really old or is swapping to disk.

 

[iansilv]

I am using a Mac mini that is three years old that I upgraded with an ssd from OWC. All the iMacs are new or just three years old. Latest Sierra 10.12.3 on all of them.
[doublepost=1486168578][/doublepost]The Mac mini is the server.

 

[iansilv]

Has anyone had these kind of problems with network accounts?

 

[IHelpId10t5]

1) AFP is no longer the correct protocol to be using. SMB has been the default for years now.

2) If you have a Windows server, bind the Macs to the Windows domain (set to create a mobile account with local home directory). Then all users can login from any box.

3) If you have ANY antivirus or 3rd party security products installed on the Macs then remove it (that's likely the issue with slowness, instability, and beachballing). 3rd party security products installed on the Mac have NO advantage yet INCREASE the attack surface over the unaltered Mac OS, while increasing greatly instability and poor performance.

 

[iansilv]

I do not have any security products, antivirus or anything. I don't have a windows server- just the Mac server.

I tried smb but it worked even worse- so I put home directories to be shared AFP only. I do not have any windows machines. Are you saying I should switch the network home folders to be shared via smb?

 

[leekil]

If Safari is in use in all cases, I would suspect that. It seems to me that it uses more memory faster than it did before, and it can lock up on my 4 GB MacBook Air, maybe due to swapping?

 

[satcomer]

You need the free application EtreCheck. Think of it as a super accelerated System report. It will show you paths to manually delete old plugins, startup items that are slowing down your "upgrade"!

 

[iansilv]

I've heard etrecheck is bad...

Ok is it possible that my problems stem from sharing my user accounts via AFP and not SMB, and switching them corrupted something? Because I switched them to try it out with SMB and had problems too

 

[iansilv]

Alright just to make sure this information is out there for the small group of people who use local network accounts, here is what I did to fix my problems:

I trashed the open directory and redid it from scratch with all new user accounts after making sure every computer was at 10.12.3.

I set all the user accounts to only run off smb.

Since then, no more beach balls or problems. Everything is running well.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

I've heard etrecheck is bad...

I've never heard that. Not sure why it would be a problem, as it does nothing to modify your system - it identifies issues and suggests actions you can take. It's always possible that it provides some poor advice, but in my limited use of the app, it has yet to suggest something that doesn't check out as an appropriate measure to take.

Now, as with any downloaded software, I wouldn't trust a download from any source but the developer's site. Considering all the bogus "Adobe Flash Players" out there, there could well be a bogus "EtreCheck" floating around as well.

 

[satcomer]

I've heard etrecheck is bad...

Ok is it possible that my problems stem from sharing my user accounts via AFP and not SMB, and switching them corrupted something? Because I switched them to try it out with SMB and had problems too

Where is review that super system report bad? All it does is scan
N and then prints out a text report (with paths to files) so the user could delete/update files manually!

 

[Kris Kelvin]

In my experience, network homes are dead. Regardless if using AFP or SMB, they won't work properly with recent versions of macOS. The main reason seems to be that a lot of Apple's software (Safari, Keychain, a bunch of LaunchDaemons etc.) use SQLite databases which don't work properly on network volumes and get corrupted sooner or later.

Apple hasn't officially dropped network home functionality, but they never responded to my bug reports and basically everyone in education and enterprise switched to alternative solutions. Examples:

• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/macenterprise/Kb_WAV0zSlk/Vp3JKPDNzWsJ
• https://www.reddit.com/r/macsysadmin/comments/3feffk/network_homes_hell/

My advice: Use locally stored accounts (or Guest account) and provide shortcuts to relevant network shares.