Symptom: When I browse to my network OD user homes folder, at /Servers/thefly.local/Users, Finder permanently beachballs. At that point Force Quit Apps is also not available and I have to hard crash and restart. (Bad.)

Additional symptoms: Workgroup Manager cannot create new user homes when creating new users. Mobile accounts cannot sync. Kerberos cannot authenticate. (Bad, bad.)

However: If I browse directly to /Users, there is no beachball.

Possible cause: in setting up DNS services, I created several zone entries. These entries, although since deleted via the Server Admin tool, continue to pop up in /automount/Servers. (And despite the fact that I turned DNS services off.)

One of the zones that I had created a was called thefly.local, same as my local server address (‘thefly’ being the server’s name). I am theorizing that this may have created a conflicting/redundant automount–since an OSX machine always has an automount called machinename.local–that is causing some kind of nasty, infinite loop.

Does my theory make any sense? Do the symptoms sounds familiar to anyone? Any advice on removing automounts?

I am running OSXS 10.4.10. Happy to supply more details. My OSX Server is effectively hobbled until the network User folder is working again.