Setting up Domain for Home Network

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Drunken_King

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Jan 12, 2007
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Hello Everyone hope your having a great Friday. Yesterday a friend of mine sold me a copy of Windows 2000 Server. In my home I have 5 computers running on a workgroup. Now for small project, I obtained an old computer and want to set up a domain. I installed Windows 2000 on the computer and setup Active Directory. Now I looked up how to join Leopard to Active Directory but it cannot find the Domain. There is an error saying it cant find the DNS or something. All my other computers connected fine. (Vista Ultimate and XP Pro) I have read that I need to set up my Domain to have a static IP and point to its own DNS Server. Now all my computers are behind a router. How would I go about setting up the Domain to point to its own DNS Server and have a static IP when my router assigns the computers an IP?
 
I'm not familiar at all with Server 2000, but in Server 2003/8, there is a DNS Serer Role that you need to turn on and setup.

Technically, if you want to do it right, you should also disable DHCP on your router and enable the DHCP server in Windows Server.
 
I see, my domain is connected wirelessly to the router, if it matters. If I disable DHCP, how will the other computers find an address and connect to the internet?
 
if the DNS and DHCP gets setup properly on the server, the clients will still get the default gateway which would be your router's IP address to access the internet.

during the DHCP setup, I believe it asks what the default gateway should be; just enter your router's IP.

edit: der... I just re-read what you wrote, and I missed it.

ALL computers are connecting wirelessly to the router? None of them are hard-wired to anything?
 
Yes, if you disable DHCP on the router, and enable it (and properly set it up) on the server, they will pull IP's just like they should.

As j-sta said, set the default gateway to the routers IP and you will be able to get internet access.
 
Eh... probably not a good idea to do all that with only a WiFi connection to all the clients and servers.
 
I would at least want the server to be wired, is that not at all possible?
 
Well it is but to move everything, ugh. Ill just do it wireless, if I decide to keep it permanent then ill wire it to the router.
 
If Server 2000 has the 'Manage Your Server' wizard, make sure to set up the DNS service through that. Otherwise, see if you can install it through the 'Add/Remove Windows Components' snap in, part of Add/Remove Software in the Control Panel.

Then, make sure that all your clients are set up to use your Server 2000 box as the DNS server. From what I've seen, AD stores some of the information about the domain as DNS records.
 
So what would I do first?
Enable the DHCP Server on my Server, then Disable the Router DHCP?
I enabled the DHCP and disabled the router DHCP, so now no computer can access the internet. Do I give my server any static IP?
 
Drunken_King said:
So what would I do first?
Enable the DHCP Server on my Server, then Disable the Router DHCP?
I enabled the DHCP and disabled the router DHCP, so now no computer can access the internet. Do I give my server any static IP?
Click to expand...

When you installed AD, if you took the defaults, it installed DNS on your AD server automatically.

You need to assign a static IP address to your AD server,just assign it an IP address that would be valid to talk to your router in its default configuration.

Set up DHCP to serve addresses from that same subnet. Assign the DNS IP as your AD servers IP address, and the default gateway as the router's IP address. Assign the domains DNS name as the DNS suffix.

In your DNS setup make sure there is not a root entry in the DNS. You can then either leave the DNS setup alone and it will perform lookups versus the Internic root servers, or you can set up a forwarder to external DNS servers. I'd recommend forwarding to OpenDNS. https://www.opendns.com/start/

Have the client machines lease a new IP address. And your windows clients should be good to go. If I remember correctly, you have to change the deafult behavior of a couple of AD options to get an OS X box to join a domain sucesfully. Apple may have started supporting some newer encryption algorithms since I last dabbled in it though. I haven't played with domains and Leopard.
 
Thanks man. I will try all that. Srry I took some time to respond, I couldnt access the internet, lol. :p But im up and running now so time to set it up. What would be appropriate IP for my router? lol. I'm noob.
 
Well since this is a small network, there isn't any reason you can't use your routers default of Class C. I would give the router 192.168.1.1, the server 1.2, then 1.3, 1.4 etc for the clients. Keep it simple.

The router should already be set to 1.1, and you set the static IP for the server as 1.2. So in the DHCP scope in the DHCP role of the server, set the range to 192.168.1.3 to 192.168.1.254. Any machine that connects to your network will pull an IP automatically from that range just like it would from your router.
 
Thanks for all your responses. So there is no configuration that I need to do with my clients is that correct? Other than make sure they join the domain?
 
Well I just realized one of my computers is Windows Vista HP, so it can't join a domain. Would it be able to access network resources if i just put the Domain Name in the workgroup box?
 
So I have finished setting up everything, DHCP, DNS, AD. Now I can't access the interent from the other computers. They are getting the lease from the server but they cannot access the internet. What did I do wrong?
 
do an ipconfig on one of them.
what's the IP, DNS, and default gateway info?
 
Make sure your DHCP server configuration in your Server 2000 box give the clients proper settings for gateway and DNS...DNS needs to point to your server, and gateway will be your router's internal IP address.
 
Well I got everything working. It was working with DHCP but then i decided to just use the router DHCP. Then I had a problem with adding Leopard to the domain but finally realized I had to add the DNS Manually to the adapter. All computers can now successfully connect to the internet and can sign on to the domain. Thank you all for your help. I really appreciate it.
 
Well, first off that article was really helpful. Now I read that some routers have the capability of modifying the DHCP Settings. On my router I logged in, and found Broadband DNS. It was set to Obtain Automatically. So I put my server's DNS IP and it seemed to work as internet connectivity was still available. Is this were I was suppose to put my Server's DNS IP?
 
Drunken_King said:
Also if my Windows Server acts as the DHCP Server, will it need to run 24/7?
Click to expand...

ehhh... not necessarily. It depends on what you have the lease times set to. If you setup the lease time to last a week, then the computers will continue to work until their lease is up, which in that case would be a week.
But, it will need to be on 24/7 for DNS-duties.

unless you also assign your ISP's DNS as secondary DNS in the DHCP settings, which can get flakey.
 
Thanks. Well some of the computers will not be part of the domain, so I just needed for them to be able to connect to the internet without having to keep the server on 24/7. But if a computer turns off, won't it look for another IP upon restart?
 
there is really no reason to have a domain for what you are doing. you can just make sure that whatever login(s) you are using on the computers are also on the server. (or in active directory)

if you have a server, then you will want to have it on all the time.

if the server is off, and you restart a computer, then it will not find a dhcp server and get an apipa address (169.254.###.###)

you can leave your router as the dhcp server, you may even have a place in it where you can specify the server's address as the default gateway, but probably not. you can just point the dns to the server's ip manually on all of the computers (or just the ones in the domain).
 
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