Unable to sign into a standalone Xserve Node Mac OS X Server 10.4

Reinstall with a valid local DNS server configuration, or (and it’s been a very long time since I was running Leopard on anything, so I don’t recall the prompt path for this) tell Mac OS X Server it’ll be hosting local DNS during the install, if you don’t already have a local DNS server. Key: Do NOT reference an ISP DNS server, unless you’re going to try to host private IP addresses in a public DNS server, and I would not start there. Do NOT skip the DNS setup.

Servers don’t like bad DNS in general due to network security requiremente, and Mac OS X Server defini gets wonky with bad DNS, and it’s comparatively hard to fix Mac OS X Server releases as far back as youkre running here as the bad DNS gets embedded all over.

PPC kits will not boot on Intel.

Compared with 10.12 and 10.13 for instance, the 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6 releases were pretty buggy, and server was far more complex tominstall and manage.

Ah, Xserve G5. Missed that. If it's a generic PPC distribution and not a system-specific distribution, or if it's a system-specific distro for an Xserve G5, it'll work. Older Apple systems had two distro kits around, one system-specific and one generic. I don't know if that two-kit scheme went as far back as PPC, but the system-specific kits were definitely a source of confusion for Xserve Intel.

What remote access is intend here is unfortunately immaterial, as OS X Server really wants valid DNS services; both forward and reverse DNS for its static IP address.

If that didn't happen during the initial wipe-and-install, I'd reinstall. This with either valid local DNS services either configured on the local network, or with the Xserve box itself configured as a DNS server.

The reinstall really is the easiest way out. That's based on many discussions of these configuration problems with the older OS X Server releases, and having tried to fix these errors myself on servers I was dealing with and others here in the forums. The tools to change the IP address weren't entirely reliable that far back, unfortunately. Some services could be left in odd or inconsistent states, or with weird behaviors.

But... If you want to experience this "fun" for yourself, see the changeip command for details. That might work. Or it might not.

Does the box have valid forward and reverse DNS translations configured? If the box is on a NAT’d network as is typical, then referencing ISP DNS won't work. With an invalid DNS configuration, older versions of OS X Server got really wonky. Unfortunately digging out of this case that far back can tricky, or can involve a reinstall as a slightly less ugly approach. A reinstall with a local DNS server configured with the Xserve box address works, referencing that DNS server during the initia configuration during the install.