Server App or Server Admin can't connect to a newly upgraded Lion server

Products Affected

Lion Server

Symptoms

After upgrading Mac OS X Server v10.6 to Lion Server v10.7.2 or earlier, servermgrd may not start automatically. This can cause the following symptoms:

  • Server app's login window will indicate an invalid login even though the correct username and password have been entered.
  • Server Admin will show an alert:
    "Could not connect to server.example.com.
    Server Admin was unable to connect to the server at server.example.com."

Resolution

Update the server to Lion Server v10.7.3 or later.

Additional Information

This issue does not affect servers upgraded to Lion Server v10.7.3 or later.

To check if servermgrd is loaded, see the output of this command in Terminal:

sudo launchctl list | grep -q com.apple.servermgrd && echo loaded || echo not loaded

If the output is "not loaded", load the com.apple.servermgrd job into launchd with this command:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.servermgrd.plist

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