Join Mac To Local Domain

Joining a mac to a your domain is not for the faint of heart and can get tricky depending on your environment.

Join mac to local domain. Steps to join or bind a mac to a windows domain. On you mac click system preferences in the dock and then select users groups in the system section on your mac. Mac os x and local domains published on 4 jan 2006 filed in explanation 233 words estimated 2 minutes to read some time ago mac os x hints published a hint i submitted regarding the use of the local tld top level domain with mac os x.

Domain replace with domain you want to join. To bind a mac laptop computer to an active directory domain computer name replace this with the computer name you want to bind to active directory username needs to be replaced with domain administrator who has binding unbinding rights. The only other workaround i know of is to populate each mac s etc hosts file with all the local ips and hostnames e g 10 0 0 1 foo bar local foo and then change lookupd s search order with the following command shown on two lines but the backslash should allow a copy and paste to work.

Aug 12 2018 4 min read. With these things in mind there are definitely some things to consider before joining your mac to a windows domain. Macos sierra and later can t join an active directory domain without a domain functional level of at least windows server 2008 unless you explicitly enable weak crypto even if the domain functional levels of all domains are 2008 or later the administrator may need to explicitly specify each domain trust to use kerberos aes encryption.

Specifically the hint centered around the use of mac os x with active directory domains using the local tld. If your mac is unable to communicate with domain controller the domain join will fail. You can also specify desired security groups here.

According to apple there should be no problem with this as long as the dns server is properly configured with the required soa record for the top level domain local. I am attempting to bind several mac os x 10 4 10 5 10 6 notebooks to my local domain hosted by a windows server 2008 ad domain controller. Localhost on https my domain on a mac.

If the domain controller is unavailable macos reverts to default behavior. There can be issues with joining macs to a local domain and there can also be reverse dns issues to be aware of. Dsconfigad a computer name u username ou cn computers dc network dc pcpc dc org domain.