Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named: ‘ServicesInformationXXXX’ already exists

So I went to my development OS X.5.6 server yesterday and it was taking forever to do anything, with nothing but the spinning beach ball happening.

Looking at the logs, it seemed that servermgrd was having issues (also noted that DirectoryService was running at 100% cpu) trying to create/edit a OD record in the local node.

The following error appeared in the log:

Apr 17 09:20:21 tur-macdev1 Python[47]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation1

Apr 17 09:20:21 tur-macdev1 Python[47]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation1’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation2

Apr 17 09:20:21 tur-macdev1 Python[47]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation2’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation3

Apr 17 09:20:21 tur-macdev1 Python[47]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation3’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation4

Apr 17 09:20:21 tur-macdev1 Python[47]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation4’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation5

Apr 17 09:20:21 tur-macdev1 Python[47]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation5’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation6

Apr 17 09:20:21 tur-macdev1 Python[47]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation6’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation7

Apr 17 09:20:21 tur-macdev1 Python[47]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation7’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation8

Apr 17 09:20:21 tur-macdev1 Python[47]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation8’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation9

Apr 17 09:20:21 tur-macdev1 Python[47]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation9’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation10

Apr 17 09:20:22 tur-macdev1 servermgrd[53]: Record of type dsRecTypeStandard:Config named ‘ServicesInformation’ already exists in /Local/Default. Trying with new name: ServicesInformation1

And this went on for quite some time, creating several thousand extra records in the local directory.
After checking the contents of theĀ /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/config directory, it would seems thatĀ /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/config/ServicesInformation.plist was for some reason empty.
To fix this error, I deleted all but one of the newly created ServicesInformationXXX.plist files, renamed it to ServicesInformation.plist and restarted the server. This seemed to do the trick and now the server runs ok.
As a side note, this record seems to have something to do with web services – blog, wiki etc. As stopping this services initially stopped the system trying to create this file.