The bent-back pegbox means that a lute has 7.5 times as much friction at the nut as a guitar, taking angles of 10 degrees for the guitar and 80 for the lute.
For the strings attached to the farthest pegs (say, the fourth course) this friction causes trouble because the strings stick at the nut during tuning. Graphite lubrication never helped me much. Nor did tugging at the string, though it seems this should work when tuning downward. To fix the problem, I tied a loop of ordinary household twine around the string in the peg- box, and MOVED IT AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO THE NUT. Now I adjust the peg, and then give a momentary tug on the loop. The tug pulls the string almost completely away from the nut, and thus equalizes the tension along the entire length of the string. In response, the pitch immediately and reliably reflects the slightest movement of the peg (in either direction), as with a harp. A side-benefit is that the peg stays pushed in longer, since the peg is turned so little. Of course, if you put loops on multiple strings, then you have a mass of loops from which it is difficult to find the one you need. I've ordered a skein of multi-colored knitting yarn to see whether color-coding will reduce this problem. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
