open directory list not showing at startup, where do i start to look

I presume you mean the login window is not listing the Open Directory user accounts? This actually is the normal default behaviour for the login window.

Is your login window showing just two boxes for the user name and password, or is it listing just local user accounts? If it is listing some user accounts is "Other" in that list?

When I used to run 10.5 Server, I used to create a Computer Group, add all my client computers to that group and set a managed preference for that group to force my client computers to show a full list of Open Directory accounts. You do this as follows -

• Launch Workgroup Manager
• Login to Workgroup Manager
• If you don't already have a suitable one, create a new Computer group
• If needed add all your client computers to this Computer group
• Now with that Computer group still selected, click on the Preferences icon at the top of the Workgroup Manager window
• Click on the Login choice on the left
• You should now see at the top a set of radio buttons for Never, Once, or Always - choose Always
• If you now look in the main part of the window you should see options for things like Style - List of users (which is what you want) and under that tick boxes for Show network users (which is also what you want)
• When you have set things as desired, click on the Apply Now button in the bottom right
• You will need to reboot the client computer to test this

Note: If you have a really large number of user accounts it might take a while to draw the list of accounts in the Login screen. I had about 70 and it was fairly fast.