Home directories from GUI work but not from command line

Question

I'm having trouble accessing home directories through SSH. After significant trouble, I reinstalled OS 10.4.6 Server on each of my 24 XServes. This is a HPC with an XServe RAID providing the storage space. I promoted the first XServe to an Open Directory master and created 2 test users. I created a two sharepoints from the XServe RAID--one for general data and one for home directories. I enabled AFP on both, granted R/W access to the default group "staff" (of which my two test users are members) and set the home directory sharepoint ("HomeDir") to automount using AFP for users' home directories through WGM. If I use Remote Desktop to login to one of the cluster nodes, the home directory seems to mount correctly. However, if I try to access the same user account through the command line--the home directory cannot be found.
I can cd to /Network/Servers/headnode.domain.com/Volumes/HomeDir; but I cannot see any of the folders listed there. On the head node, I can verify that the user's home directory has been created--it seems to be fully populated. I've checked permissions, and they seem to be correct; but the fact that I cannot access it from the command line seems to suggest that there's a greater permissions issue.
I've tried doing the identical setup using an NFS automount instead of AFP with no success. I can't find any answers for command line/SSH access to this problem. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
CF

Answer 1

I've discovered something else in the course of troubleshooting this problem. If I login as a test user through remote desktop to, say, node1.domain.com; the home directory mounts correctly; and, as long as I do not reboot either headnode.domain.com or node1.domain.com, I can login via SSH and access my home directory.
Of course, if I do reboot--access no longer works. I've browsed through dozens of other posts and tried to follow other users' suggestions. I've manually created a hosts file, which I've uploaded to /etc/hosts on each node. I've double and triple checked DNS and DHCP--I have LDAP propagated through autodiscovery on DHCP; I have each node statically assigned; and I have DNS entries for each node. I also have computer entries in WGM; and I've used the FQDN of each node (node#.domain.com) for everything across the board.
I'm also hitting the "authentication error" when I try to access my other AFP sharepoint. I can't figure this out.