When viewing the "general" tab on the properties page for a computer in the
ADUC utility, the role of the computer can be listed as "domain controller"
or "workstation or server". Since the Machine-Role attribute is missing on
these computer objects in the AD tree, I would have to assume that ADUC
derives this information from other sources. Since the role information
that is displayed very quickly, even when the specified computer is offline,
I would not expect that there's any sort of live communication going on
where ADUC interrogates the computer to obtain the information.
One remaining possibility is that the information is obtained from or
inferred from the computer object's location within the domain, such as
being under the "Domain Controllers" container as opposed to being in any
other container or any other OU.
Is this how ADUC is actually obtaining the information?
Also, if the Machine-Role attribute value isn't populated by default when
the computer is added to AD, then what does create this attribute and
assign it a value on the computer object?
I'm looking for a method to use that rapidly distinguishes between domain
controllers, member servers and workstations that all have computer objects
in the tree, with the desire being to eliminate workstations from a list of
computer names. Making an API function call to
DsRoleGetPrimaryDomainInformation() works great to determine the computer's
role *IF* the computer is present on the network. If the computer is not
reachable for any reason, then the API function calls spends several minutes
retrying it's communications attempting to reach the RPC Server service on
the specified remote system and thus the API function call doesn't return
even a NAK in an acceptable period of time.
--
Chuck Chopp
ChuckChopp (at) rtfmcsi (dot) com http://www.rtfmcsi.com
RTFM Consulting Services Inc. 864 801 2795 voice & voicemail
103 Autumn Hill Road 864 801 2774 fax
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