Q: Lion Server: All network users have disappeared
Hi,
A search through the forums and kbase didn't give me anything that mapped well to my problem. Here's the situation:
Specs:
Mac Pro (2008) 6GB RAM, SSD boot with space available, OS X Lion (latest) with Server.app
Services:
File Sharing
Users: less than 15—accounts only used for file server access.
This is the only server on the local network, all network routing is taken care of by a Meraki router.
I went to add a new user to our fileserver, and was unable to connect to the server over Apple Remote Desktop. At the time, file sharing from the server (I *believe*) was still working. I logged in with the file server's local admin account via SSH and tried to use Kickstart to get ARD running again—something I'm well versed in. The script ran as usual, but ARD could still not connect. So, as everyone was in a meeting, I tried to use `shutdown` to reboot the fileserver from the CLI, something I've also done in the past (but not frequently). Usually that takes about a minute to work, and then my shell disconnects—but after 5 minutes, the Mac had not rebooted.
At that point, I decided to walk to the server and manually force it down by holding the power button in. That powered off the Mac, and 30 seconds later, I booted it up.
Back on my Mac via ARD, I was able to remotely control it and got to the Fileserver's log in screen, which featured a red dot in the use field I'd never seen before. It's tool tip read "network users are currently unavailable" (paraphrased, perhaps). I logged in with the Fileserver's local admin user (as usual) and launched the Server.app, only to find that in the `Users` section, there were no users listed, and the plus and minus buttons were greyed out.
I tried rebooting but got the same results. I then repaired permissions and verified the boot drive. Lots of permissions repairs (as usual) but nothing improved. Another reboot after the permission repair and disk repair, just for safety's sakes… and as you can guess by me posting here… no improvement.
I'm not heavily versed in Server. I'm not even sure if those users are stored in a database, and where that DB would live. Does server make dumps or backups of the users on its own? Should I have been? Is this LDAP? Anyone have some next steps I can try? What info would be useful?
My first goal would be to recover a damaged DB. I only have just under 15 users, so re-creation isn't difficult. But, under the department of "I don't know a ton about Lion Server" I don't know if network users act like OS X users… where you could create a new user with the same username, but if their UID is different, then they won't have access to their owned files on the fileserver… is Server that exacting? Does it care who owns the file?
Thanks in advance for any ideas, or resources you can point me to!
Mac Pro, OS X Server, 10.7.5 Lion Server
Posted on Jan 19, 2015 11:42 AM