A network error occurred while trying to communicate with the server.

Question

Hello All,
I am getting some new error messages when opening the server app on my Mac Mini server running OS X 10.8.2 and Server 2.2.1. First I get a message that says "A network error occurred while trying to communicate with the server." and then after trying to open some of the service panes, I get additional errors that say "Multiple errors occurred on the server while processing commands." The services don't load and I just see "Error Reading Settings" in the server app.
I started to get these errors when I added a new website to the server. All the services are working fine but I cannot access them in the server app.
In console I'm seeing these errors when I try to access various services:
2/24/13 8:02:12.692 PM Server[956]: Error: The server '10.0.1.150' reported an error while processing a command of type: 'readSettings' in plug-in: 'servermgr_dns'. Error: Error Domain=XSActionErrorDomain Code=499 "The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “10.0.1.150” which could put your confidential information at risk." UserInfo=0x7f8c4003a760 {NSLocalizedDescription=The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “10.0.1.150” which could put your confidential information at risk., originalError=Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1202 "The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “10.0.1.150” which could put your confidential information at risk." UserInfo=0x7f8c3f547db0 {NSURLErrorFailingURLPeerTrustErrorKey=<SecTrust 0x7f8c40599080 [0x7fff7711ffd0]>, NSLocalizedRecoverySuggestion=Would you like to connect to the server anyway?, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f8c3d58c0b0 "The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “10.0.1.150” which could put your confidential information at risk.", NSErrorPeerCertificateChainKey=(
    "<SecCertificate 0x7f8c3f6747e0 [0x7fff7711ffd0]>"
), NSLocalizedDescription=The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “10.0.1.150” which could put your confidential information at risk., NSErrorFailingURLKey=https://10.0.1.150:311/commands/servermgr_dns, NSErrorFailingURLStringKey=https://10.0.1.150:311/commands/servermgr_dns, NSErrorClientCertificateStateKey=0}}
I have already restarted the server and used terminal to stop and start postgres. Any more thoughts on how to repair this?

Answer 1

Just as I had suspected, the whole GUI crashed because of certificate problems. After two and a half hours with enterprise support, it turns out the com.apple.servermgrd certificate in the server keychain had become corrupt.
We determined this by typing https://127.0.0.1:311 into Safari and we could see all the server modules and interact with them through the web interface. All the services were working properly as well so we knew that it was just the Server.app GUI that simply couldn't read settings that was causing the problem.
So, first we closed the server app. Went into /var/servermgrd and deleted all the files from this folder. Then, in Keychain, deleted the com.apple.servermgrd certificate. Did a search for com.apple.servermgrd in Keychain and deleted everything else that came up for it.
Then restarted the server. Now the server app was able to properly connect to the services in the background and read them properly. This was the jist of the troubleshooting that solved the problem. It also seems like DNS is causing problems because that is the only service that will not read right but is functioning properly in the background.
I will post an update once Apple figures out what is wrong with DNS. Hope this helps anybody else having these problems.