Now, I realise that this little post is probably just for my records, but we go …

At work I was setting up a server (Apple XServe running OS X Server 10.4.3), and I wanted to copy the set up from a different XServe.

• So in Server Admin (application), in the set up for the old server, I dragged the little icon from the Web < Settings < Sites tab to the desktop.
• I then edited it and dragged it back to the same window for the new server.
• It looked like it had worked, but wouldn't save. I tried the same thing with the command line tools … no luck.
• Phoned Apple support - surprisingly helpful (past experiences have not been entirely satisfactory). With their help I managed to boil it down to a problem with the plist file.
• So, I created an empty plist file and bit by bit copied stuff in …

The culprit? The one secure domain. I have had problems with them before, so the moral of this story is, if your OS X Server web service is giving you problems, try taking out the secure stuff first. It might save some digging.

SteamSHIFT out.

Just as an addendum - a good number of problems in OS X are problems with plist files (a useful command line tool is plutil).