Windows .local domain causing Mac issues?

[Kineas]

Having a problem with a few of the Mac's in our computer room where they'll show a red dot in the username field and say that network accounts are unavailable. It only happens with maybe 2 or 3 out of 30 and seems to fix itself with a restart so I didn't think anything more of it.

 

Started looking into the issue as some teachers see it and panic. I contacted KRCS who installed our Mac server and set all of the Macs up on the network. They've explained to me that this is a known problem that occurs when the domain has been set up with a .local name instead of using the proper name for it and the Mac's think they're trying to connect to a computer instead of a domain and they time out. The only fix being to create a new domain with the correct format name and copy everything over. Why they never told me about this problem when they were installing all of it, I don't know, but that's KRCS for you.

 

They also told me there is some documentation about the problem on Apple's website which I can't seem to find. I Google'd about changing the domain name and found some people talking about using rendom.exe to rename the domain instead of having to recreate it.

 

Just wondering whether anyone else has had this problem and how they went around fixing it.

[sidewinder]

I've managed 2 Apple networks on .local domains and while there are occasional issues, and it would be better if the domain wasn't .local, I've never even considered changing the domain.

 

FWIW I don't get the issues you describe very often at all - once in a blue moon but usually they end up connecting after 30 seconds or so

[sted]

could you just create an alias on you domain (so domain.internal rather than domain.local) and have the macs connect to that?

[Kineas]

So I've created an alias in DNS under domain.local, and I've set it to domain.internal but what do I put as the host? domain.local? the server name? Or do I need to create a new zone of domain.internal? Edited December 2, 2013 by Kineas

[stevehp]

Here are some Apple KB articles about the issue

OS X: Improving login times for clients joined to Active Directory domains ending in ".local" and Login and directory binding delays on systems joined to an Active Directory domain ending in ".local"

 

Essentially having a .local domain conflicts with Apple's Bonjour protocol which uses .local . Other things that cause problems in integrated environments are DNS issues and network glitches. Before going 1:1 we tried a golden triangle setup with a .local domain and ran into issue after issue. Wasn't worth my time to keep supporting that so it was abandoned in favor of separating our Windows and Apple networks in two. Thinking about blowing out both setups and combining them again next year we'll see though.