Unable To Create New Open Directory Master

Question

I have a brand new installation of MacOS X Mountain Lion Server, latest version, in a brand new Mac Mini. This Mac Mini is being co-located in a data centre, and I am setting it up via remote access (screen sharing). The data centre has setup DNS zone records for my domain, including a reverse DNS PTR record, and everything in the DNS is working fine.
During the installation of Server, when the installer asked for the type of 'Host Name', I selected 'Host name for Internet'. The installer was able to use the IP address of the Mac Mini to automatically find the correct host name, and configure it. Once the installation was complete, no services were turned on - not even DNS, as the installer probably figured out that DNS services were being handled externally.
The first thing I went to try and do was to turn on Open Directory. I turn the service on, and a sheet comes down, where I select to "Create a new Open Directory Domain". I click 'next', and on the next sheet I enter the OD Administrator's details, and password. Click 'next' again, and then I get the following message:
"This computer's host name is invalid.
The host name does not resolve to any configured address of this computer. Please ensure the host name is correct."
Opening Terminal app, and typing "hostname", I get the correct hostname, as showing in Server app itself.
Entering "sudo changeip -checkhostname" in Terminal app, I get all correct details for the IP address and host name of the machine, and the message: "The names match. There is nothing to change. dirserv:success = 'success'"
I finally tried getting Server app to change the host name itself - going into the Server pane, select the 'Network' tab, and in the 'Names' section, next to the host name, click on the "Edit..." button. Again, went through the wizard, and the wizard again was able to find the hostname automatically from the machine's IP address. Once the 'changing' process was completed, I went to try and initialise Open Directory, and again, got the same message.
Can anyone shed any light? Any suggestion would be welcome at this stage...

Answer 1

MrHoffman, thank you for your guidance. You have, however, given me a bit of a headache.
MrHoffman wrote:
127.0.0.1 is likely going to be incorrect here.  Please reference the DC DNS servers, and not a local server.  If you're in a DC and particularly with a public-facing host without an outboard firewall to block DNS traffic, you likely do not want to be running your own local DNS services.
As described previously, the server was referencing the DC DNS servers. The server was not running its own DNS service. Open Directory was not able to detect that the ip address and the hostname were correct with this setup - even though the command line on the server as well as externally showed that all DNS records were setup correctly, and that the IP address and hostname matched. The server's own installation wizard and 'Change Host Name' wizard automatically detected the hostname from the machine's ip address - by consulting the reverse DNS PTR record in the DC DNS servers.
Starting the server's own DNS server - and adding '127.0.0.1' to the top of the DNS list in Preferences - allowed me to create the Open Directory master, finally. Of course, the internal DNS server was setup so that only the server itself could access it - it was closed to any other machines - and even then, I had it running only momentarily: once Open Directory created its master domain, I switched DNS service off, and removed '127.0.0.1' from the DNS list in Prefences.
With that setup, everything seemed to work fine. All users were able to login, access their share points and their mail.
MrHoffman wrote:
For the host name, the host name would usually be the FQDN fully-qualified domain name, and "example.com" isn't usually a host name.  You'd usually find somehostname.example.com here
That is the only machine in the domain. All public sub-domains - like 'mail', 'www' or 'calendar' - point to the same machine. The reverse DNS PTR record points to the higher-level domain "example.com".
Your warning, however, made me worried:
MrHoffman wrote:
I'd probably rebuild the OD configuration, as I'd wonder of OD now had a bogus host name.  Once bad DNS gets involved, the entanglements can be quite pernicious..
So I decided to heed your advice, and rebuild OD. I deleted the Open Directory master, and tried rebuilding it with DNS service turned off. As before, OD insists that "the host name does not resolve to any configured address of this computer", and refuses to create the new Master. I ended up following the procedure above again - switching DNS service on temporarily to get OD to work.
The problem is, that now no user can connect to the server anymore. Everyone keeps getting a message stating that their password is wrong - including users on their iPhones and iPads.
I suspect that when I created the new OD Master, it created a new certificate, and that is what is causing problems. While I could try to get the desktop users to delete the old certificates from their keychain, this is not really an option for iPhone/iPad users.
Where do I go from here? After almost 24 hours straight dealing with this, I'm at the end of my rope...