AEBS fails to restart after having been configured

Question

I want to use Airtunes and have successfully done for months. But my AEBS is now becoming highly erratic.
After hard reset, my AEBS can been seen by my MacBook. I can set it up fine using Airport Utility, apparently. Set it up by 'Joining another network', giving it a name etc, confirming the wish to play iTunes through it, etc. All goes fine. Once the set up is done, Airport Utility says something like 'AEBS set up is now complete. You can now close Airport Utility while the base stations restarts'; but the base station does not restart - "unknown error".
Having been able to see the base station, it suddenly then 'disappears' - neither Airport Utility nor iTunes can see it.
I have been through this loop so many times, each time hopeful because the computer can clearly see the base station, read its setting and apparently reconfigure them, but at the last step it fails.
Any ideas? Time for a new Base Station?
Tim

Answer 1

Same problem here. Was quite surprised that this has slipped through apple for so long.
Just picked up a macbook pro 17, had to do two things to make this work with 10.6.6...
1) Click on keychain_access -> System (keychain) -> IPSec Shared Secret
Click on "Access Control" tab button
select radio button: Allow all applications to access this item
2) sudo launchctl stop com.apple.racoon
sudo launchctl start com.apple.racoon
Reconnecting then worked.
IMPORTANT: I noticed that it is still flaky making connections.
It seems that doing a stop/start on racoon fixes the problem.
(I'm not convinced on the causality with this; would prefer apple folks to offer up a real solution.)
Yes.. I don't like the "allow all apps access" solution either.
Fwiw, I tried the "allow all apps access" first, which cleared out the blessed apps list. Ugh.
I suppose removing/adding the vpn again would get the list back, then configd (?) could be added.
jeff