Mac Server all of a sudden running very slow!

[jackmccarlie]

Hi, I'm not a qualified server technician but am currently trying my best to run a server in a Secondary School! Please help, need to fix ASAP.

So basically we've got a Mac Pro running Snow Leopard server which has become incredibly slow in the past week. Nothing has changed in our department to trigger this. Here's everything I know so far...

- If I try to log on to the admin account when "Some Network Accounts Are Available", log on will take under a minute. If I try to log on to the admin account when the light goes green and "Network Accounts Are Available" log on will take forever and eventually just crash and which point I have to just force a shutdown and try again.

- When I can log on, some aspects of the computing seems fast and other aspects are really slow. For example, a few programs open as soon as I log on no problem, however a simple spotlight search or trying to open Sytem Preferences will crash the computer completely.

- Have tried booting in Safe Mode, and everything ran fast and how it's mean to but once restarting and booting normally the problems remained.

Sorry for the lack of knowledge!!

Thanks in advance.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Hi, I'm not a qualified server technician but am currently trying my best to run a server in a Secondary School! Please help, need to fix ASAP.

So basically we've got a Mac Pro running Snow Leopard server which has become incredibly slow in the past week. Nothing has changed in our department to trigger this. Here's everything I know so far...

- If I try to log on to the admin account when "Some Network Accounts Are Available", log on will take under a minute. If I try to log on to the admin account when the light goes green and "Network Accounts Are Available" log on will take forever and eventually just crash and which point I have to just force a shutdown and try again.

- When I can log on, some aspects of the computing seems fast and other aspects are really slow. For example, a few programs open as soon as I log on no problem, however a simple spotlight search or trying to open Sytem Preferences will crash the computer completely.

- Have tried booting in Safe Mode, and everything ran fast and how it's mean to but once restarting and booting normally the problems remained.

Sorry for the lack of knowledge!!

Thanks in advance.

Since OS X Server is built on Mach, a Unix derivative, you might want to also google this issue and see if there are any parallels to other flavors of Unix, or other Unix groups that may have any feedback on this.

Off the cuff, it sounds like the server is IO bound, but that's just a guess. Checking Activity Monitor, or watching what the top utility from the Terminal window shows might go a long way to finding the culprit. You type 'sudo top' and enter the admin password and get a window something like this (In case you aren't familiar)



top gives a lot of information...

 

[Altemose]

Hi, I'm not a qualified server technician but am currently trying my best to run a server in a Secondary School! Please help, need to fix ASAP.



So basically we've got a Mac Pro running Snow Leopard server which has become incredibly slow in the past week. Nothing has changed in our department to trigger this. Here's everything I know so far...



- If I try to log on to the admin account when "Some Network Accounts Are Available", log on will take under a minute. If I try to log on to the admin account when the light goes green and "Network Accounts Are Available" log on will take forever and eventually just crash and which point I have to just force a shutdown and try again.



- When I can log on, some aspects of the computing seems fast and other aspects are really slow. For example, a few programs open as soon as I log on no problem, however a simple spotlight search or trying to open Sytem Preferences will crash the computer completely.



- Have tried booting in Safe Mode, and everything ran fast and how it's mean to but once restarting and booting normally the problems remained.



Sorry for the lack of knowledge!!



Thanks in advance.

Check out Activity Monitor and view the RAM usage especially and processor load. If the processor is overloaded the machine will run terribly as it is trying to do so much at once!

Since it ran right before, try verifying and repairing the hard drive in Disk Utility. Also repair the permissions for the BOOT DRIVE.