Q: Authentication problem adding OS X Server account on the server itself (as a client)
My local network consists of a LANCOM router, an iMac, an iPhone and several other devices. The router provides the Internet connection, the DHCP and DNS servers and an internal local domain ("fth0.home"). DNS is working as expected between all devices ("<device>.fth0.home"), and mDNS is also working as expected between all Apple devices ("<device>.local"). The iMac is running OS X El Capitan 10.11.2 with OS X Server 5.0.15, serving CalDAV and CardDAV services for the iPhone and the iMac itself, which is used as a local iCloud alternative.
When creating the setup described above I encountered a problem (since I'm using OS X in the German language, the following description might contain slight deviations from the correct English language texts): OS X Server was up and running, using the hostname "imac.fth0.home". To configure the iMac as a client (for the Calendar and the Contacts apps) I opened the Internet Accounts settings. When selecting "OS X Server Account", selecting the offered server (which shows the expected hostname) and entering username and password, the credentials are rejected. As a workaround I successfully added separate Internet accounts for CalDAV and CardDAV, so I have a working solution.
I've been searching for other people having the same problem in the forums, but only found a lot of similar problems, where clients not located on the server were unable to connect to some services. Is using the iMac simultaneously as OS X Server and as a client a special use case so that no-one has encountered the problem so far?
Looking at the rather complex Apache web server setup with several layers of virtual hosts and log files I suspect the problem could be in the area of the IP addresses. The server hostname "imac.fth0.home" can be resolved to 192.168.8.21 (by the router and the iMac) and to 127.0.0.1 (by the iMac), and the clients IP address can also be either of them. Ultimately the HTTP digest authentication fails in "/var/log/apache2/services/ACSServer_error_log", where the client is shown as 127.0.0.1, whereas it is shown as 192.168.8.21 in "/var/log/apache2/service_proxy_error.log". As I'm no web server expert, I could need some help if I'm going to analyze the problem further ...
Any ideas what to look at?
iMac with Retina 5K display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.2)
Posted on Dec 28, 2015 8:36 AM