Can't create home directories

Hi guys,

I've been trying to set up a OS X Lion Server on a new Mac Mini for the past few days now. I've set up DNS (I think at least - I can access the server from outside my network with an external domain name I've pointed at my static IP). The main issue that's preventing me from moving forward is setting up users.

I should probably state that I set up my DNS incorrectly the first time, and used the external domain as my hostname. However, as my router does not support NAT loopback, I had to use the internal, non changing IP address instead. Hopefully you're still with me. I tried to start afresh at this point but realised it was actually quite a difficult process - I found out you had to hold down Command + R to enter recovery mode, but I could only reinstall Lion and not Lion Server - and Lion Server is not listed in my purchased apps in the App Store, so I'm a bit apprehensive about proceeding. Instead I've just tried to reset everything through the Server interface manually.

So now I'm at a point where Server.app says my dns and Open Directory are set up properly (at least I hope so), and users can log in to the mac mini server via their network accounts. Great. However, if I create a new account and try to log in (from another Mac), I get an error:

Logging into the account [name] failed because an error occurred.

Not that helpful, but I discovered it was due to the Home directory not being created. I copied and pasted a home directory that already existed, renamed it to [name] and could log in.

So I got a copy of Workgroup manager (I'd been using Server.app before), created a new user, clicked on the 'Home' tab, set the Home to the current dns (afp://192.168.1.35/Users) and clicked 'Create home', then Save. However, the home directory simply isn't created in /Network/Servers/192.168.1.35/Users. At this point I did a bit of hunting and found out about createhomedir. I tried running this, and received an error:

creating home directories for (192.168.1.35)

Entity: line 1: parser error : Document is empty

/var/empty

^

And thats all the output I can get out of it.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I'm trying to be as thorough with my explanation as possible. Any help would be appreciated, as I really don't want to have to copy and paste a blank home directory each time I create a new user.

Thanks,

Rob