Active Directory Archives - A Leslie Wong Blog

March 23, 2013July 26, 2021

Windows Server 2012 on a Macbook

After the failure of an old computer running Windows Server 2003, I setup Windows Server 2012 on a Macbook.

Years ago, I set up a Sony Vaio PCG-Z505HS running Windows Server 2003 at home so I could keep up with Macs and Active Directory. When I recently experienced problems with DHCP and DNS, I discovered that the Vaio had died. There was no LED power indication. My troubleshooting consisted of jiggling the power connector and checking the power supply voltage. When I measured voltage from the AC adaptor, I gave up, using the rationale that it had lived its useful life. The Vaio, with a Pentium 3, 500 MHz CPU, was introduced in January 2000.

Coincidentally, I had a hardware failure in my Macbook (late 2006), so I decided to repurpose it as a domain server using an evaluation version of Windows Server 2012.

The Windows Server 2012 installation was simple using the Server with a GUI mode installation. The Server Manager and configuration tools greatly simplify the setup. With Windows Server 2012 on a Macbook running silicon introduced in 2006 – an Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T7200 that has Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x), the next step is to try virtualization. As a Macbook running OS X, I successfully ran VMware Fusion VMs running Ubuntu and Windows 2000, though I forsee the 3 GB of RAM in the current system will be a limiting factor.

The best part about running an Active Directory domain at home is joining computeres to the domain. The welcome message says, “Welcome to the lower_slobbovia domain.

March 26, 2007March 29, 2016

Macs in an Active Directory Environment

Ryan Faas at Computer World has written an informative article on supporting Macs in an Active Directory environment.

He reviews the advantages and disadvantages of Apple’s Active Directory plug-in, Thursby’s ADmitMac and Centrify’s Direct Control for Mac.

It’s a good article for system administrators working in a Mac-Windows environment.

October 7, 2006March 3, 2017

Mac OS X 10.4.8 and SMB

I downloaded and installed the Mac OS X 10.4.8 Combo Update (PPC) for my Macintrash the day it came out.

I always look for improvements in SMB performance with OS X updates. My Macintrash is a member of a Windows domain and I have a mobile user profile stored locally. When I’m logged on to the Macintrash with my domain credentials, for some reason, getting a directory listing is very slow when I use SMB to connect to a network share. If I’m logged in as a local user, and connect to a SMB share using my domain credentials, the directory listing is instantaneous.

I use AppleScripts to log in to shares. Each script has an alias with a unique icon in my DragThing dock for each share. I just click on the alias in the dock and the share mounts:

tell application “Finder”
mount volume “smb://domain;username:password@computer/share”
end tell

I have used Group Logic’s ExtremeZ-IP, and it works great. I used Integrating Macs and Microsoft Active Directory at macwindows.com active directory page for help but there was no mention of this problem.