Required Settings for Samba NT4 Domains

From SambaWiki
Revision as of 17:16, 18 May 2014 by Mmuehlfeld (talk | contribs) (Roll back to the 30 July 2013, 22:17 version. The later changes are not correct (e. g. it's not just related to s3) or have nothing to do with this topic (W8 and dots in domain name))

When do I need Registry changes?

Samba usually doesn't require any changes on your Windows OS.

So please read very carefully on the sections below why and when you should do them!

If your situation or problem isn't mentioned here, then it's highly recommented to NOT do any registry changes!



Joining Windows7/8 or Windows Server 2008r2/2012 to an Samba NT4-style domain

This changes are only necessary if you want to join a Windows7/8 or Windows Server 2008r2/2012 machine to a Samba NT4-style domain!

It's not required and not recommended if you run Samba as AD DC!

If you try to join any of the mentioned OS you'll encounter an error

The following error occourred attempting to join the domain „.....“:

The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.

The following registry change work with any Samba version that isn't already discontinued:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanManWorkstation\Parameters]

DWORD DomainCompatibilityMode 1
DWORD DNSNameResolutionRequired 0

Do the changes manually in regedit.exe or save the above in a plain text file with Notepad/Editor (not Word/Wordpad/OpenOffice/LibreOffice/...!) and name it sambafix.reg. Make sure, that the file has the ending .reg. Then you can import it directly to your registry by double-clicking, if you have the sufficient permissions.

After the next reboot you can join the machine to your domain, but you'll still encounter an error:

Changing the Primary Domain DNS name of this computer to "" failed. The name will remain ".....".
The error was:

The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted

But this error can safely be ignored or, if you run Windows 7, silenced by a hotfix, that was published by Microsoft: KB2171571: You incorrectly receive an error message when you join a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 to a Samba 3-based domain.



IMPORTANT: Registry changes that never should be done!

There are many pages on the internet, which suggest to change the values of RequireSignOrSeal and RequireStrongKey. This is NOT recommended by the Samba team, as it will break interoperability with other Windows and Samba versions!

If you have already changed these parameters, turn them back to 1 as shown below and reboot:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CCS\Services\Netlogon\Parameters]

DWORD RequireSignOrSeal = 1
DWORD RequireStrongKey = 1