A quick and dirty guide to setting up a Mac OS X Server and MCX
This guide to deploying your server for the first time includes setting up managed preferences and working a bit with Mac Manager.
Update – Corey had to move his server so an updated version of the pdf is now hosted on AFP548.
by 
You mention using the FQDN instead of the host name during the Server
Setup Assistant and I wondering why that is.
Thanks,
Kevin
Because Mac OS X Server has a bit of OCD about having fully qualified names.
If you were to try to setup an OD master without a FQDN that mapped both
forward and reverse in DNS the KDC would probably fail to start.
—
Breaking my server to save yours.
Josh Wisenbaker
http://www.afp548.com
My understanding is that best practice is for the hostname of the server to be
its fully qualified domain name – so really one and the same.
I have followed section 1.A of the guide (DNS), except for step 5 where I just entered ‘server1’ rather than the FQDN, server1.domain.com.
DNS does work.
However, what concerns me, is that when I launch WG Manager I see ‘server.local’ rather than ‘server.domain.com’ in connection dialog.
So I changed the zone ref and restarted DNS (then the server) but WG Manager kept showing server.local.
Where is it get the server.local / server.domain.com from? Is the step I missed first time round really going to the cause of the problem?
It will default to using the name it previously used. Server.local is it’s natural
Rendezvous name (just adds ".local" to the computer name). In Server Admin,
remove old server and "add" using FQDN. At the end of the day it doesn’t
really matter which you use for Workgroup Manager and Server Admin progs.
However, if you did not set it up originally using the fully qualified domain
name, then you will likely not be able to get the KDC to run which means that
running a functional Open Directory Master will be nigh impossible.