[Fedora-directory-users] Fedora Core 5 Blocking on Boot

[Richi Plana]

Hi, All.

On Wed, 2006-07-26 at 00:03 -0600, Richi Plana wrote:
> I recently set up fedora-ds and managed to configure several FC5
> machines to authenticate and get user information from the LDAP server.
> Unfortunately, the laptop isn't always connected to the network so when
> it boots up, the process hangs when it tries to start the "message bus".
> I figure the process blocks when it tries to change UID to that of the
> dbus user. When the machine isn't connected to the network (ie. no cable
> and wireless isn't available), the process just hangs.
> 
> Any suggestions on fixing this?

So I've implemented one fix. For some reason, even
with /etc/nsswitch.conf configured as follows, FC5 systems still go to
LDAP even if a user exists locally (dbus user exists in /etc/passwd):

/etc/nsswitch.conf:
...
passwd: files ldap
shadow: files ldap
group: files ldap
...


So the solution I applied was to edit /etc/ldap.conf and added the entry
"bind_policy hard". This is supposed to make nss_ldap exit after failing
a connection attempt (instead of the default infinite retries).

My problem now is that none of my DS users can log on to the
newly-started machine. I thought that's what the "Cache User
Information" option in system-config-authentication -> Account
Information does, but it apparently doesn't. Is there a way to cache
LDAP Authentication and Account information so that offline machines
will allow logons from LDAP users? Kind of like how WinXP does?
-- 
Richi Plana <richip at richip.dhs.org>