Mysterious and Stubborn Open Directory Problem
All the fancy GUI for servers and client machines sometimes hides the obvious.
The Mini Server provides Open Directory Services, Kerberos and LDAP. Configuring client machines is a simple affair, System Preferences->Accounts->Authenticate as admin, click the Join.. button, and configured services "just work" for every machine on the network -- except mine. Setting up Mail, Address Book, Calendar Server is a simple affair. Except when it doesn't just work. Then it really doesn't work.
Click the Join Button, easy.
On mine, it would look like everything was going to work, the ball would flash green, then turn red, and throw a not very helpful error. Where to go from here?
Connection Failed
Macosxhints.com had the best discussion I could find that was close to the problem.
-- http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-98806.html
If it is only on one client, it is something on that client are the words of wisdom missing in that discussion.
It remained a curious anomaly for me. Until the day I had to have this working for a demonstration. After the panic subsided, I figured the easiest way to fix it would be to simply change the computer hostname as per the forum hint.
System Preferences->Sharing->Computer Name and enter a new computer name. That is when I noticed that the computer name I would set was being overriden somewhere. That somewhere was in the /etc/hosts file. It was an old /etc/hosts file with a manually set host name that had migrated through a machine upgrade. Arghh!
Removing that one line from the file was all that was required.
Old hosts file was the problem
File this as the Open Directory problem that wasn't an open directory problem. When it gets too mysterious, start looking for the obvious.