howto reinstall/reinitialize os x server

I shall think very seriously about your advice, Jeffrey! Thanks for taking the time to do some thing too!! 🙂

Janette

You're welcome, goodluck!

Jeffrey

As well as deleting

/Applications/Server.app

and

/var/db/.ServerSetupDone

you should also remove or move the following .plists from your library.

The easist way is to navigate to /Library and then search for 'server'. The ones you'll want to get rid of are;

com.apple.servermgr_accounts.plist

com.apple.servermgr_info.plist

com.apple.servermgrd.plist

Then you can either copy Server.app back out of the trash or redownload it depending on your previous steps. The only persistent settings will be your file shares, as these get handed to the standard Sharing prefpane.

Hope this helps.

I think you may have answered this but am not positive. I had an older version of Server (10.6) I think. I had impression that if I downloaded the Mountain Lion and OS X server apps (each $20 or so) I would be able to install Mountain Lion and then add the OS X Server. I did this. Now I can no longer see my first drive and I have queston marks for items like server admin, server preferences, etc. Kind of perplexed.

So I see several folks talking about various issues and I am hesitant to try too much here. I have a recent back up on my Time Capsule. To be honest not sure where the two apps go installed to

I have the server in order to learn how the mac servers work. So I guess not proficient enought to understand what all I screwed up on.

I saw a couple blurbs about how to upgrade but I thought I did what they said. Installed Mountain Lion and Then OS X server.

So any advice anybody can offer appreciated.

sbeeker wrote:

I think you may have answered this but am not positive. I had an older version of Server (10.6) I think. I had impression that if I downloaded the Mountain Lion and OS X server apps (each $20 or so) I would be able to install Mountain Lion and then add the OS X Server. I did this. Now I can no longer see my first drive and I have queston marks for items like server admin, server preferences, etc. Kind of perplexed.

All the 10.6 server administration software does not work with 10.8. The only Apple software to administer a 10.8 server is the "Server.app" program, and the 10.8 Workgroup Manager available here: http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1567

OK so I was able to fix this isssue without reinstalling OSX.

First I deleted Server.app and everything else I could find relating to the OSX server in /var and /Library. After reinstalling a clean copy from the App Store I still received the error you have mentioned.

Here's the fix. I edited the file following file:/var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist

And removed the following:

<key>com.apple.serverd</key>

<dict>

<key>Disabled</key>

<false/>

</dict>

Now I was able to get past this step and reinstall a clean OSX server. It still had some of my old DNS and DHCP settings, but you can easily clean those out.

That has to be the single, most important bit of advice I've received! While the element in my overrides.plist file had 'True' for 'Disabled', deleting the element and attempting to install the Server (without redownloading the app) had a successful outcome!! 🙂

I can now synchronise the new Server with the one that is running within Parallels Desktop (on the same Mac Mini!) and, later, permit the new one to take over all tasks. Thanks

great! removing those lines work for me. Thanks BigKstyle.

This solved my issues with an update to Server.app.

You're a hero.

How on earth did you figure this out?