At war with Lion Server

Hi,

First of all, I am no ICT man or codewarrior but I do use computers now for about 28 years (mostly mac), so I know a thing or two.

I purchased Lion Server with the intention of creating a home/smallbusiness server with (I believe) some basic functionality such as Addressbook and Calendar sharing. VPN and iChat are working fine, it's the sharing stuff I can't get to work.

After struggling with the setup, I had to reinstall several times, lost the original Snow Leopard to Lion upgrade due to the impossibility of reinstalling Lion when server is installed etc etc. I finally got the basics right and the server is running. All the network stuff is sorted out, I can reach the server securely from anywhere, account logins work fine etc.

There must be something wrong with my expectations or approach because sharing an Addressbook seems impossible to me.

Let's start with the thing that should be simple... A centralized Addressbook (list of 240 contacts that for now are only locally available) that can be read, searched and edited (add, remove, change) by (for now) 2 Users.

Ok, so I create 2 User accounts and a Workgroup. My logic tells me that I have to bind those 2 Users within a Workgroup to enable sharing. Is this true?

Anyway, in the very simple setup I don't even start the Open Directory service, I just start the Address Book service. My logic tells me that now when I create a CardDAV account in the Addressbook application on both client machines (of course with their own specific user login data) the server group (server accesspoint within the addressbook application) should point to the centralized Addressbook database on the server. So when I add an address, it appears immediately to the other client (user) and vice versa.

This is not happening, when I copy contacts to the server they are only visible to me and nobody else. Also when I do start Open Directory, anything I plunge onto the server is only viewable by me and not anybody else. I tried everything I can think of, that includes creating separate and group CardDAV accounts in the Profile manager, a share user for both clients to log into, a shared user binded with the 2 users within a group etc etc.

There is also something weird with shared calendars, although I do get this to work. I just can't believe it should be set up as I do. Maybe when somebody wants to explain me how to share an Addressbook between users I will understand the calendar share to.

Hope somebody can help (this drives me grazy).

Thanks!