iMac Dropping Out Of Windows Domain

[Ad93]

In July last year we got some iMac's, when they were installed they were bound to the Windows .local network. Up until last week they were all working properly and connecting to the students network home folders, but then 2 lost the .local network seemingly randomly.

We managed to reconnect both to the network and again they worked properly but then a today, only a couple of days after they joined the domain, one has again somehow lost the .local domain.

I was just wondering if anybody else had come across this and could provide a bit of light on how this is happening.

Thanks

A

[User3204]

We had this issue, it turned out we'd swapped computers around and renamed them based upon where they were located in the classroom.

We'd find the computer with a new name (due to its new position), was joined in, it would kick off the computer that had been called that name. So we'd rejoin this computer, with its new name, but it would then kick off the computer which it thought had a matching name.

We found the trick to fixing was every time we had a machine, remove it from AD on the client, then go to the AD and remove the computer name if it still exists. Then re-join it.
You may find that every time you go through this process another machine loses its connection, but then as long as it's joined in with the new name it'll work.

Oh, another important thing to note, it only seems to check that its able to connect to AD at boot up, so machines will break when you restart them, not when you rejoin them...

[Carter]

I've had a similar issues but it was more due to the "dsconfigad -passinterval" as all the computers would drop off of AD after 14 days.

[twin--turbo]

we have had various issues, 2 that spring to mind are

1) Mac's / Linux don't like the .local domain , .internal is recomended
2) Windows DHCP & DNS get messed up for some reason so we forced DHCP reservations

Rob

[Tsonga]

When you say reconnect, when you go to Accounts -> Login options did it show the domain as unavailable?

[Ad93]

When you say reconnect, when you go to Accounts -> Login options did it show the domain as unavailable?

When we connect the iMacs to the domain we use ADmit Mac so the domain doesn't show here at all, but when we go to the ADmit Mac area the domain is missing and a empty white box which can be typed in is showing. On the other Macs however this box is missing and just shows the .local domain and connected.

A

[Tsonga]

Ah I'm afraid I run out of knowledge here.

The only problem I have had close to this is that it forgets domains after a)Big updates and b) the time on the DC and the Mac being off. Might be worth checking the latter.

[jdell]

We had a similar problem and Tsonga is spot on check the clock, make sure its set to your forest root as they have to be exact matches for the Mac to stay on the network.

Ah I'm afraid I run out of knowledge here.

The only problem I have had close to this is that it forgets domains after a)Big updates and b) the time on the DC and the Mac being off. Might be worth checking the latter.