I have RH9 running on vmware WS 4.01. I used the PADL migration tools to convert my passwd & group files, loaded them into my directory server, ran autoconfig to activate PAM-LDAP authentication. I was able to authenticate from another vmware session and a puTTY session from Windows. I thought this was a good thing and took a snapshot of the image. Then I rebooted. Now I cannot log into either vmware image AT ALL from ANYWHERE.

Question #1: Is there anything I can do?
Question #2: What did I do wrong?
Question #3: If I have to rebuild these images, what do I need to do differently?
Question #4: When PAM-LDAP was working (before I rebooted), it was extremely slow. I was tracing the LDAP requests and they were lightning speed. Something was wrong with the PAM-LDAP client. Any ideas?

Try starting your linux image in single user mode to see if you can change or at least see what might be wrong with the config.

I solved some of the problem by rebuilding the images. I found that I had not configured the Directory Instance to start automatically, so nothing was able to authenticate. So I have answered the first three of my four questions by trial and error. I'm still experiencing major performance issues with the PAM-LDAP client. I can see the Directory trace running very fast. It seems that the PAM client is taking forever to figure out what to request. Any ideas?

Thanks, Tim

The only thing I could think of is the order in which your machine tries to authenticate you.
Do you have more than one (LDAP) authentication active in the pam system. In that case check the order so that LDAP is checked early.

Just a stab in the dark.