Home directory and personal website trouble after 10.6.7 Server

Question

Xserve recently upgraded to 10.6.7 Server and it seems to have broken two features:
When doing Connect to Server as an LDAP user their home folder is no longer available as a mountable volume. The share that holds all user home folders IS available so that's not the end of the world.
However this also broke the personal web sites, so going to:
http://<serveraddress>/~shortname now just gives a 403 error
and I get these errors in the error_log (under WebServer in Console)
[Tue Aug 24 11:38:48 2010] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] File does not exist: /Library/WebServer/Documents/~walshd
[Mon Apr 25 09:11:22 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] (62)Too many levels of symbolic links: access to /~walshd failed
[Mon Apr 25 12:39:39 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] (62)Too many levels of symbolic links: access to /~walshd failed
The sharepoint is on an old XServe RAID unit connected directly to server via FibreChannel, but that hasn't changed in a long time...only recent change was running all Software Updates which included moving up to 10.6.7 Server.
Any ideas what I'm missing or where to start looking to resolve this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Camelot wrote:
When doing Connect to Server as an LDAP user their home folder is no longer available as a mountable volume. The share that holds all user home folders IS available so that's not the end of the world.
There are so many ways of configuring home directories that this can't be answered without more information.
For example, are you using automount to mount the user's home directory when they log in?
or do the clients mount a static mount and their Open Directory record just includes a link to the (mounted) home directory?
We are using automounts to get users their home folders. And when logging in at a terminal with an LDAP account you do get into your account as expected. It's only Go -> Connect to Server that won't give the home folder as a sharepoint and the web service for user sites that we agree are most likely tied together.
I have both userdir_module and apple_userdir_module enabled at the moment, although when I tried just one or the other I was getting an Object does not exist rather than the permission error.
I think the key to solving this is in the console log entries httpd -> error_log:
errors before posting:
[Tue Aug 24 11:38:48 2010] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] File does not exist: /Library/WebServer/Documents/~walshd
[Mon Apr 25 09:11:22 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] (62)Too many levels of symbolic links: access to /~walshd failed
[Mon Apr 25 12:39:39 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] (62)Too many levels of symbolic links: access to /~walshd failed
[Mon Apr 25 14:40:17 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] (62)Too many levels of symbolic links: access to /~walshd failed
[Wed Apr 27 06:57:03 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] (62)Too many levels of symbolic links: access to /~walshd failed
[Wed Apr 27 06:57:17 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] (62)Too many levels of symbolic links: access to /~walshd failed
with userdir_module disabled and apple_userdir_module enabled:
[Wed Apr 27 06:57:32 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] File does not exist: /Library/WebServer/Documents/~walshd
[Wed Apr 27 06:57:34 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] File does not exist: /Library/WebServer/Documents/~walshd
[Wed Apr 27 06:57:35 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] File does not exist: /Library/WebServer/Documents/~walshd
[Wed Apr 27 06:57:49 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] File does not exist: /Library/WebServer/Documents/~walshd
[Wed Apr 27 06:57:50 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] File does not exist: /Library/WebServer/Documents/~walshd
with userdir_module enabled and apple_userdir_module disabled:
[Wed Apr 27 06:58:02 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] File does not exist: /Network/Servers/staff.lsrhs.net/Volumes/Staff/Home/walshd
[Wed Apr 27 06:58:03 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] File does not exist: /Network/Servers/staff.lsrhs.net/Volumes/Staff/Home/walshd
[Wed Apr 27 06:58:04 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] File does not exist: /Network/Servers/staff.lsrhs.net/Volumes/Staff/Home/walshd
with both enabled again:
[Wed Apr 27 06:58:22 2011] [error] [client 10.2.104.16] (62)Too many levels of symbolic links: access to /~walshd failed
The strangest thing about this issue is that it happened  after I applied a bunch of updates last week:
2010-04-22 12:52:17 -0400: Installed "Remote Desktop Client Update" (3.3.2)
2010-04-22 12:52:23 -0400: Installed "AirPort Base Station Update 2010-001" (5.5.1)
2010-04-22 12:52:39 -0400: Installed "QuickTime" (7.6.6)
2010-04-22 12:52:41 -0400: Installed "Xserve EFI Firmware Update" (1.1)
2010-04-22 12:52:44 -0400: Installed "iLife Support" (9.0.4)
2010-04-22 12:52:59 -0400: Installed "Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 5" (1.0)
2010-04-22 12:53:21 -0400: Installed "iTunes" (9.1)
2010-04-22 12:54:31 -0400: Installed "Security Update 2010-003" (1.0)
2010-04-22 12:55:16 -0400: Installed "Safari" (4.0.5)
2010-04-22 13:15:22 -0400: Installed "Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 6" (1.0)
Could any of these have broken the home directories sharepoints or is this just a huge coincidence?