Currently working on a PDC for my home network. I’m running into some issues with DNS (surprise), and I could use some expertise. Are there any good Windows Domain networking guides/books available? The Samba manpages are a fantastic resource, but I’m looking for something that will give me a breakdown of the different protocols used and some examples of conversations between the workstation and the server.
The short answer is to say that the domain logon stuff runs on top of a name resolution service.
A name resolution service, i.e.
-DNS
-Netbios/winbind
I.e. if you’re trying to log into “MASTER” for your DC, MASTER can get resolved by either DNS or netbios. If you’re using DNS, you need control over the DNS servers. If you’re using Netbios, you need to make sure that whatever server wins the election to be the local master for resolution knows the address of MASTER. (Or for smaller networks, try to force your PDC to also be the Netbios master. Use DNS to hand out the wins server, etc.)
That’s the 2 second explanation. Hit me up on gchat if you need more help.
-D
Well, I did some base troubleshooting and I had misconfigured my primary DNS server…or at least what my network thought was my primary DNS server. I now have forwarding setup properly, and a lot of my issues seem to have gone away. It’s amazing what you can figure out when you actually use Wireshark to troubleshoot. I think I’ve wrapped my head around Windows domains a little more, but if I run into any issues I’ll send you a message. Thanks!