Lion Server DHCP randomly loses settings and reverts to defaults

I’ve been trying to set up Lion Server on a Mac Pro with it acting as the router/gateway/firewall/DNS/NAT and DHCP. I’ve been trying to setup an internal-only network named mycompany.something. After having a lot of problems with that I switched to using mycompany.private (as recommended in Mac OS X Lion Server for Dummies).

When I was using mycompany.private and I turned on DHCP for the 192.168.2.x side of things it would distribute addresses and machines behind the server could get to the outside world.

I then noticed that every time I went back to the DHCP settings Subnets panel in Server Admin the subnets were either gone or different.

Looking at the logs it became apparent that the DHCP server was basically losing the settings file (which I assume is created/altered via Server Admin) and was putting a default one in its place.

Any idea what causes this to happen and how I can cajole the DHCP server into retaining my settings?

Solution 1:

Just shooting a few ideas here: a router on your network that has a DHCP server activated. Permissions on the settings files are wrong. Deleting all settings and prefs and starting from scratch. Make sure the OS is up-to-date.

And you say the logs only show that the settings files disappeared? Nothing else?