Renaming a domain server 2003 std

janesssssy · 16 May 2006 at 18:52

As title really. I have a domian called *****net.local
However i have found out that a Mac needs to go on to it.

My limited knowledge, and my collegue has told me that the domain needs to be called or atleast could be called *****net.org : getting rid of the local part.

Is this true and if so is it possible with out reloading the server from scratch.

Thanks for any info.

Dave

csmager · 16 May 2006 at 19:25

Never heard that one before. Have you tried the Mac?

EDIT: It appears you're correct. There are issues, but seemingly fixable:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107800

Andyt_uk · 16 May 2006 at 19:32

yeh, unfortunately macs dont like it when the domain contains the name local and i believe people are told on MS courses that its best practise to use that. Anyways, cant remember exactly how we got around it, but I think we did something with the DNS to work around it. I'll see if i can find out some more.

crashuk · 16 May 2006 at 19:50

ptr record?

janesssssy · 16 May 2006 at 19:53

Andyt_uk said:
yeh, unfortunately macs dont like it when the domain contains the name local and i believe people are told on MS courses that its best practise to use that. Anyways, cant remember exactly how we got around it, but I think we did something with the DNS to work around it. I'll see if i can find out some more.

Sounds interenting, Any new info.
That goes for any one else.

csmager · 16 May 2006 at 20:00

janesssssy said:
Sounds interenting, Any new info.
That goes for any one else.

Google throws up plenty of the results.

And the link I gave in the second post appears to be the solution to the cause of the problem.

janesssssy · 16 May 2006 at 20:37

thank you there.

if for some unknown reason i cant get that to work, Is there a way to change a windows Domain name?

csmager: hope this will be the end of it

thank you.

marin · 16 May 2006 at 21:08

Here is a link to a document for connecting Mac to SBS2003 should be the same procedure for you:-

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=46578

Andyt_uk · 16 May 2006 at 22:05

janesssssy said:
Sounds interenting, Any new info.
That goes for any one else.

erm i can try talking to the guys still working there. Was over a year ago now i think and unfortunately i cant remember what we did exactly.

Curiosityx · 16 May 2006 at 23:34

Active directory forest roots do not have to end in valid domain notations they can simply be Business.local or Business.Wan or Business.internal

As long as they are compatible with DNS.

Andyt_uk · 17 May 2006 at 00:33

but unfortunately if they are .local then theres a problem as i believe it is a reserved word for rendezvous (from what i can remember, and i'm no mac expert)

try making sure there is a PTR record for all DCs in the Reverse Lookup Zone, seems to be the current suggestion from a quick google. I'll try asking the guys again at work when there about tomorrow.

Otacon · 17 May 2006 at 10:12

Andyt_uk said:
yeh, unfortunately macs dont like it when the domain contains the name local and i believe people are told on MS courses that its best practise to use that.

They used to, but not any more. Nowadays they tell you to extend your public namespace for the private LAN.

Anyway. if it really comes it it (and it is a knee jerk solution which could cause a lot more hassle), then yes there is a domain renaming tool.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/downloads/winsrvr/domainrename.mspx

Andyt_uk · 17 May 2006 at 12:28

Otacon said:
They used to, but not any more. Nowadays they tell you to extend your public namespace for the private LAN.

Anyway. if it really comes it it (and it is a knee jerk solution which could cause a lot more hassle), then yes there is a domain renaming tool.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/downloads/winsrvr/domainrename.mspx

aye i believe it was a few years back that it used to be best practise.

AndyC · 17 May 2006 at 19:42

That's interesting what do people call their domains now, ours are .local, I guess .lan as above is fine.

I always thought as long as didn't end in .com and didn't match any external domains etc - are their any others to avoid.

csmager · 17 May 2006 at 19:47

AndyC said:
I always thought as long as didn't end in .com and didn't match any external domains etc - are their any others to avoid.

Best practice now is to use your external domain internally and use a split DNS configuration.

e.g. I own the domain csmager.net, and my AD domain name is also csmager.net. The AD DNS server points www.csmager.net to my external web host, for example, and the rest are all resolved internally to private addresses. Works fine.

Otacon · 17 May 2006 at 20:01

csmager said:
e.g. I own the domain csmager.net, and my AD domain name is also csmager.net.

That's certainly not best practice, unless you have total control of your public namespace, though not impossible (as evident). Even if you do, you should only keep bare minimum in the 'public facing' domain an have it as the forest root, then create another domain (office.domain.com or whatever) for the rest of it.

csmager · 17 May 2006 at 20:23

Otacon said:
That's certainly not best practice, unless you have total control of your public namespace, though not impossible (as evident). Even if you do, you should only keep bare minimum in the 'public facing' domain an have it as the forest root, then create another domain (office.domain.com or whatever) for the rest of it.

Not quite sure I follow - my ISPs DNS servers have mail., www., gateway., etc. None of my internal addresses are in the 'public facing' part.

Internally on the Windows 2003 server, it contains internal records.

Where am I going wrong/what's the problem? I'm not doubting you - I'm always willing to learn!

csmager · 17 May 2006 at 20:32

csmager said:
Where am I going wrong/what's the problem? I'm not doubting you - I'm always willing to learn!

Done a bit more searching - it seems that using, say, ad.csmager.net for the domain, home.ad.csmager.net for home and durham.ad.csmager.net for durham etc and having the internal pcs as pc1.home.ad.csmager.net or server.durham.ad.csmager.net would (while looking cumbersome) actually make my life a hell of a lot easier.

I will readily admit that overlapping namespaces does my head in. And there're only a handful of PCs on the network (I only do this for fun, it's a bit of a learning curve though!).

I think this is what you were trying to put across, I just didn't get it(!)

Otacon · 17 May 2006 at 23:34

You got it

We have a couple of clients that have the same thing, and it really does cause unexpected headaches. You can deal with them all, you just shouldn't have to.

csmager · 22 May 2006 at 14:38

Otacon said:
You got it We have a couple of clients that have the same thing, and it really does cause unexpected headaches. You can deal with them all, you just shouldn't have to.

Sorry for the 'holy thread revival'. Can I rename the domain from, say, csmager.net to int.csmager.net easily? Or is it likely to break everything?

I'm sorting through some VPN issues at the moment, and having them both as the same is starting to make my brain hurt. It would make my life a lot easier to know that *.int.csmager.net resolved to a private IP and *.csmager.net resolved to a public IP!