Why join the UNITY domain?
A workstation must be a member of the UNITY Active Directory in order to use services in our domain.
There are several steps one must complete in order to successfully join a workstation to the UNITY domain.
- Configure your workstation to properly locate the Kerberos servers and use an appropriate encryption level
- Use the Add Computer to Domain Wizard to add the computer to the domain
- Possibly wait for the workstation to be moved into the correct organization
Step 1: Configure the Workstation (and Reboot)
As a user with "administrator" access to the workstation, incorporate this registry file to allow the machine to locate the Kerberos servers, and to specify that the more secure NTLMv2 encryption be used for workstation registration.
You can incorporate a saved registry file by double clicking on it in Windows Explorer after downloading it, or by using the command line "regedit /s filename" (where filename is the complete name and path to where you've downloaded the .reg file).
When you have completed this setup you MUST reboot the workstation!
Step 2:Join the Domain
If you haven't rebooted after completing the step above, go back and do so now.
If you have not yet changed your password to initialize it for Active Directory, you will get a "bad username or password" error when you attempt to join the domain. Change your password (possibly to the same value) and you should be able to proceed.
As a user with "administrator" access to the workstation, go to the Control Panel and select "System" and then the "Computer Name" tab.
Press "Change" to join the Unity domain. In the "Computer Name Changes" dialog displayed, check the "Domain" radio button and enter "unity.ad.ncsu.edu" as the domain.
You will be prompted for a username and password. Enter your Unity password, prefixed with UNITY\ and your Unity password.
If you have difficulties, be sure you've spelled UNITY\ with a backslash and no spaces (for example, user jaklein would enter UNITY\jaklein) Also be sure that you have initialized your AD password by changing it from the password page.
You should get a message "Welcome to the unity.ad.ncsu.edu domain" to confirm your successful join.
Step 3: Wait for Group Policies
Your network administrator may have assigned special settings, applications, printers or other configurations for your workstation to be delivered via AD Group Policy. It may take some time for your workstation to be moved into it's proper container to receive these group policies.
Indeed, as of this page's last update, the code hasn't even been written to move computer objects, so the wait may be extensive. :-)
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