" NetBoot got an empty response"

Question

Hi
New to OSX Server and having trouble with NetBoot for imaging clients. Have 10.4.3 server. It worked OK on first set up, although had lots of trouble starting NetBoot service, it wouldn't start, then just started later by itself.
When I first set it up I imaged about 60 clients, but noticed after a few days that when I open up Server Admin it takes maybe five minutes for SA to "refresh" and find all the info to display for the varioius services. Have DNS, DHCP both running.
If I restart it seems to clear everything and SA freshes in a few seconds, but if left for several days even if I don't use Netboot for imaging, it reverts to the very slow refresh. Clients can log in OK.
Now after imaging a client, I usually have a major problem. Today SA took ages to refresh when started and came up with an error for NetBoot. On opening the netboot log there was nothing there. Later SA quit comletely. A restart of the server seemed to clear things a bit but later when I tried to image a client it hung on the blue screen before the activation window appears.
I have now switched NetBoot off to see if it stops the problems with slow refresh of SA.
Below are some of the log files. Can anyone tell me what is happening and what does "an empty response" indicate?
\f0\fs24 \cf0 Mac OS X Version 10.4.3 (Build 8F46)\
2006-03-03 09:04:15 +1100\
2006-03-03 09:04:16.869 SystemUIServer[14583] lang is:en\
2006-03-03 09:05:16.072 SoftwareUpdateCheck[14586] Checking for updates\
2006-03-03 09:06:55.034 Server Admin[14589] Server got an empty response (servermgr_info may have crashed)\
2006-03-03 09:06:55.035 Server Admin[14589] Disabling multithreaded transactions for server1.local\
2006-03-03 09:06:55.036 Server Admin[14589] Server got an empty response (servermgr_info relay may have crashed)\
2006-03-03 09:09:00.602 Server Admin[14589] NetBoot got an empty response (servermgr_netboot may have crashed)\
2006-03-03 09:11:10.870 Server Admin[14589] NetBoot got an empty response (servermgr_netboot may have crashed)\
2006-03-03 09:14:18.200 Server Admin[14589] NetBoot got an empty response (servermgr_netboot may have crashed)\
2006-03-03 09:17:24.184 Server Admin[14589] NetBoot got an empty response (servermgr_netboot may have crashed)\
Mar 3 09:17:31 server1 crashdump[14657]: Server Admin crashed\
Mar 3 09:17:32 server1 crashdump[14657]: crash report written to: /Users/admin/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Server Admin.crash.log\
2006-03-03 09:27:25.225 Server Admin[14683] Server got an empty response (servermgr_info may have crashed)\
2006-03-03 09:27:25.226 Server Admin[14683] Disabling multithreaded transactions for server1.local\
2006-03-03 09:27:25.228 Server Admin[14683] Server got an empty response (servermgr_info relay may have crashed)\
2006-03-03 09:29:30.866 Server Admin[14683] NetBoot got an empty response (servermgr_netboot may have crashed)\
2006-03-03 09:31:45.507 Server Admin[14683] NetBoot got an empty response (servermgr_netboot may have crashed)\
2006-03-03 09:34:52.909 Server Admin[14683] NetBoot got an empty response (servermgr_netboot may have crashed)}
G5 2.3G   Mac OS X (10.4.3)  

Answer 1

Several questions come to mind.
1) Why are you using auto-login on the server. Ideally the server should run headless without any user logged in on the GUI. I realize that's not always practical, but it raises questions about how you're using the server.
2) Most of the problems sound like they're related to directory services since that's where the user accounts are stored. How are you using directory services? Is the server standalone? part of an Open DIrectory domain? Some other domain? a Directory Master itself?
3) Why are you using Retrospect? It's one of the buggiest piece of tra^H^H^H software around. I don't know anyone that's using it successfully on Mac OS X Server, and I've heard of several people whose problems have disappeared once they remove the software. May or may not be your problem, but it's an easy one to test in the short term.