Active Directory

It is very easy to setup a self-contained network, with a Domain Controller, using Active Directory. Too easy, in fact; I’m on my third attempt :-).

I’m using cloned hard disk images under Microsoft Virtual PC, which caused my latest problem; Active Directory let me register a computer in the domain with the same name as the domain controller. Needless to say, _nothing_ worked after that. The reason this happened was because I tried to rename the image _and_ join the domain at the same time; Windows 2000 apparently joins the domain _first_, then attempts to rename the computer. This surprised me :-)

Fortunately, I had a master disk image, so it was trivial to restart from a fresh install and rebuild the domain controller (which, thanks to Microsoft’s wizards, is easy). But then I had to rebuild the two child domain controllers, since they refused to “demote” themselves when the domain master was unavailable.

Sadly, all of this is _time consuming_, even when the host is a P4 2.8 with 1Gb of memory and oodles of disk bandwidth…

posted at 9:32 pm on Thursday, August 12, 2004 in Personal, Science and Technology, Security | Comments (1)

1 Comment

  1. Reid says:
    2004-08-16 at 16:02

    It took me a moment to figure out what you meant by PIV. I thgouht it was some sort of PVC pipe variant for plumbing or something!

    I think P4 is easier to grok.. :)

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