Question:

Purchased a Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server.

Unit is set to “Configure Manually” and is not connected to a Directory Server.

The server was not setup as an Open Directory master.

The only services running on the server are:

AFP, FTP, iCal, Mail, Web

All services will work without issue on the machine until the local user account grows above 50.

I am manually creating each account in Workgroup Manager.

External DHCP and DNS services are providing all network assignments and lookups.

sudo changeip -checkhostname confirms that “The names match. There is nothing to change.”

Currently all services work upon boot but over the course of 3-4 hours the system slowly becomes more unresponsive until it is unable to work from the local console. Web sites will load very, very slowly.

The entire time the machine responds to ping without issue. 0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.422/2.846/3.621/0.967 ms

This is while the machine will not start any local applications. A click on a Dock item will not produce any activity.

Cpu load and memory load remain low during normal usage and continue to remain low as the server degrades to complete unresponsiveness.

I have read much on various forums and have seen others with similar issues but non have had a common root.

Any direction would be appreciated. I have the latest peachpit Mac OS X Server Essentials v10.6 and am looking a starting over again for the 8th time. To state again the server works until I start growing my local account numbers.

Solution:

I would check the logs  — system and console for a clue.

I would set it up as a DNS server with an entry for itself using its LAN IP address, and point it to 127.0.0.1 for DNS resolution under system preferences.
You can always change that later, but it’s a good troubleshooting step.

It’s working way too hard doing nothing without a major setting being off.