First off let me do a small introduction. I come from a Netware background. My university's students have been using eDirectory for several years without any problems. However, we have decided (mostly because of the business model of Novell) to move all of our student logins, storage, and lab computers to Active Directory. Needless to say, this will not be a small undertaking for us. We have started testing to make sure we have all of our procedures down and have faired well so far.
Our first big hurdle was ghosting the machines and having them automatically join the AD in the correct container. Done. We've also been testing out the GPOs to move what we do now with ZenWorks to them. We will be providing our home storage solution via File System Factory which we've been using for several years under Netware - They have decided now is the time for them to write it for Active Directory.
One small problem we are having now (and we all think we're just missing something simple) is getting the domain to showup in the logon box the first time. We know after a student logs on the first time things will be OK. However, after ghosting 900 machines, the last thing we want to do is touch each one just to get this setting correct. We've ripped the registry to pieces, looked everywhere we know to look, but nothing seems to set it the first time. I realize this may not seem like a big deal to most people out there, but if you've ever had to deal with a student population you know why this is important.
One other thing for now. We have found a few custom templates we would like to use (one modifying the logon screen to tell the students what the Domain should be set as). I have added them to my test AD domain controllers' INF folder. They work just fine. When I told one of our administrators about this, he said, he didn't like that idea much (placing this on the DC). In my testing, I wasn't able to get any of the custom templates to work until I did put them there and in the INF folder. Is there another way?
I thank you in advance for you help. I would expect I'll be around here a bunch during this move.
Paul Glenn
University of Kentucky
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"I've got a fever and the only prescription is more
cowbell." --Christopher Walken
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"I've got a fever and the only prescription is more
cowbell." --Christopher Walken
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