Caintona
Level 1 (5 points)

Q: OSX Server 3 Will not start, stuck on "Preparing Services" during upgrade for 2 months

Since upgrading my server to Mavericks and OSX server 3Iwhich cost me the upgrade fee to boot) I have been unable to get OSX Server to start.  It is perpetually stuck during the "upgrade" process at the point it says "Preparing Services".  I have scoured many forums looking for solutions and nothing will get me beyond this point.  I use OSX Server primarly to assist with managing time machine backups over wifi for multiple machines.  I don't know if I'm an outlier in use, but I can't imagine im just the only one with this issue.

 

This is occuring on a Mac Mini Late 2012 model

 

Here are a few addditional threads with similar issues but no activity since October.

 

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23570078#23570078

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23532254#23532254

https://discussions.apple.com/message/24000830#24000830

 

Community, Has anyone resolved this? Any further suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Apple, Fix this!  This is unacceptable.  Refund my money and still fix this.  I've found temporary means, but having automated time machine backups is a huge convience.  I'm shocked that a company that makes such great products can fail so obviously on a seemingly primary use case.  If the solution is to reinstall rebuild the serv so be it, but just respond to this thread or the other threads I've documented above with some solution.

OSX Server 3, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Dec 13, 2013 5:52 PM

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Q: OSX Server 3 Will not start, stuck on "Preparing Services" during upgrade for 2 months

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  • Helpful answers

  • by megalink,

    megalink megalink Dec 14, 2013 12:59 AM in response to Caintona
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 14, 2013 12:59 AM in response to Caintona

    Hello i resolve install before 3.0 and after lunch i download 3.01

     

    all work i agree Apple not test noting !!!!

  • by nick101,

    nick101 nick101 Dec 14, 2013 2:05 AM in response to Caintona
    Level 5 (5,113 points)
    Dec 14, 2013 2:05 AM in response to Caintona

    Apple do *not* participate here - therese are user to user forums. So demanding here that Apple fix this will have no effect

     

    You can leave feedback here:

     

    http://www.apple.com/feedback/server.html

  • by MrHoffman,

    MrHoffman MrHoffman Dec 14, 2013 8:54 AM in response to Caintona
    Level 6 (15,637 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 14, 2013 8:54 AM in response to Caintona

    I'd clear out the old Server.app settings, would re-download Server.app from Apple, and re-start the installation and configuration.  Though intended for an upgrade from a beta to the released Server.app version 3, I'd follow this Apple procedure to perform the Server.app reset, as well.

  • by birknil,

    birknil birknil Dec 30, 2013 10:06 AM in response to Caintona
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 30, 2013 10:06 AM in response to Caintona

    This happened to me too today, but I managed to resolve the issue. Unfortunately, I believe this issue can arise from a long list of reasons and therefore the solution in my case is not necessarily going to solve your exact problem. However, the approach to debug the issue is the correct one and using it I hope you can at least find the exact issue in your case - along with solutions online.

     

    Console.app

    During installation of OS X Server a great deal of things is being logged to /Library/Logs/ServerSetup.log

    If you're not used to working within the Terminal I recommend using the built-in Console.app. You'll find the ServerSetup.log file in the left sidebar under "Files" > "/Library/Logs" if you expand the list.

     

    Run a fresh install

    To make things a bit easier make sure you follow the linked guide by @MrHoffman above to remove the clutter from before. Make sure you're reading the /Library/Logs/ServerSetup.log in Console.app as described above. If there is content in that file already click "Clear Display" - allowing you to see only the log from the installation you'll perform next.

     

    Install again

    Just install like normal, but this time keep an eye on Console.app to see what's going on. This requires some technical skills to detect when things is going wrong. I noticed the service configuration bit seems to dump things in nice chunks though with "RESULT CODE: 0" in each one. The result code should be 0 to indicate that it was successful. It even states "Setup extra succeeded" above to make it even more clear. Hopefully, this is where you'll find an exception, i.e error that is clear as to which step is breaking the install.

     

    My case

    I installed my own version of Python 2.7 instead of the built-in one from Apple. According to the logs, it seemed as though OS X Server requires the popular twisted Python package. I'm not using twisted and therefore did not have it installed - which OS X Server expected. So after installing it and cleaning up the previous failed OS X Server installation, I could run the installation again - this time successfully.

     

    I really hope that helps.

  • by Vask0,

    Vask0 Vask0 Mar 18, 2014 3:08 AM in response to birknil
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 18, 2014 3:08 AM in response to birknil

    Hi guys,

     

    I managed to solve the problem for me. I too suffered from the "Preparing Services...." label.

     

    In my case the permissions on the Server.app have been the problem. The owner of the Server.app was the logged on user and the group was "admin". Additionally the group had no read, write or execute permissions. Same for "others".

     

    For me it helped to change the owner to root and group to wheel (like 99% of the other Applications have it):

     

         sudo chown -R root:wheel /Applications/Server.app

     

    and the permissions as follows:

     

         sudo chmod -R g+rx,o+rx /Applications/Server.app

     

    I hope that helps some of you.

     

    Greetings,

    Vasko