Joining .local domains doesn't work out of the box in Hardy

> Therefore the "hosts" row must have the "dns" option next to "files" option.It has to be like this to let LikeWise work: hosts : files dns mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] mdns4 .

I can't this to work either. Are you supposed to just be able to login via gdm with an AD account or do the local users matching the AD users still have to be set up?

Hello Craig,

> I can't this to work either. Are you supposed to just be able to login
> via gdm with an AD account or do the local users matching the AD users
> still have to be set up?
>
>
Here is a link to the Likewise Open section of the Server Guide that will be
released with Hardy [1]. You will probably also need to edit
/etc/nsswitch.conf as mentioned by Alexpacio.

[1] http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/serverguide/C/likewise-open.html

--
Party On,
Adam

Alexpacio: are you using a .local domain ?

Yes.
Likewise is also unstable: when you log in with an Active Directory user, it appears an error and when you skip it, you will see that programs are very slow opening...

Thanks for the info. If you experience problems with Likewise-Open even with your workaround, please file a separate bug with more information on that error that you shouldn't skip. I'll rename this bug so that it points to ".local domains" since it is specific to them.

I confirm it doesn't work out of the box if the domain you try to join is named "something.local". This is the result of a war between Microsoft and Apple over the .local domain, with Ubuntu siding with Apple:

Ubuntu (like Apple) uses Zeroconf for simple service discovery on LAN, and this makes use of the .local domain. On the other hand, Microsoft AD won't work correctly if its domain name is not served by its own DNS. Using .local for a domain name is therefore a recipe for trouble [1].

If for some reason you have to join an AD domain called "something.local", then you want to disable Zeroconf because the two won't work together. You want the .local DNS domain to be served primarily by the Microsoft DNS and not by Zeroconf. So you edit the /etc/nsswitch.conf file accordingly.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local

This has been happening for a long time and causes all sorts of odd issues.

Why can't avahi just pay attention to the single root .local domain instead of subdomains of .local?

I'm going to go research how to do this and if there's not a way I'll come up with a patch, because this has burned me so many times I know where to look for it these days. The problem really hurts when you're trying to deploy servers automagically using different deployment systems, each one has to be modified.