Thank you, Wolf! After pulling a listing of all files inside the tar of a previous days backup that was good/working - I was able to recreate the unique permissions (not root) for directories and files that your ldap user has to own. This is for Fedora DS 1.0.4. And the server and console now start. I'm listing them in case others get stumped on why neither the Fedora DS server nor the Admin Console will start and the logs don't give enough clues Your defined ldap user and group of same name have to own: /opt/fedora-ds/slapd-mail/ (just the directory level) /opt/fedora-ds/slapd-mail/config /opt/fedora-ds/slapd-mail/db/ /opt/fedora-ds/slapd-mail/locks/ /opt/fedora-ds/slapd-mail/confbak/ /opt/fedora-ds/slapd-mail/ldif/ /opt/fedora-ds/slapd-mail/logs/ /opt/fedora-ds/slapd-mail/bak /opt/fedora-ds/slapd-mail/dsml/ /opt/fedora-ds/alias/ /opt/fedora-ds/bin/slapd/authck/ /opt/fedora-ds/clients/dsgw/context/default.conf /opt/fedora-ds/admin-serv/config/ /opt/fedora-ds/shared/