AD Disconnects after about one week

[Steve120]

I don’t know what the problem is let me tell you a little bit about the setup. Currently we are using four OS X machines, one of which is using 10.3.9 and the others 10.4.10. The Active Directory Domain is running Windows 2003. They connect via Ethernet, and they are on the same switch.

The problem: About every week or so I have to unbind and rebind our OS X machines running 10.4(10.3.9 seems to be ok). I thought it could be the AD Computer Account problem, but I don’t think it’s affecting it since the 10.3 machine seems to be ok. I have noticed the time being off by as much as one minute, but the word out on the street is that it can be up to 5 minutes off and still be ok. I will turn on the debugger to get a nice clean output of whats going on, but my preivous attempts to try and capture the problem via the logs have not worked.

If anyone can shed some light on this conundrum I shall be a happy man.

[Troubadour]

What behavior are your 10.4.10 machines exhibiting that causes you to have to unbind and rebind?

[Serge1701]

I have been having the same problem here with having to unbind and bind accounts. I’ve noticed that, for me anyways, the time being off just a minute or two tended to be the problem. Instead of unbinding and binding again, I log in to a local account and “open date and time” at the clock in the upper right corner of the screen. The time automatically adjusts itself and the connection to active directory is restored without having to bind and rebind anything.

I would like to know a way to fix that problem.

[ozpass]

Whilst I’m unable to provide a reason as to *why* this works, I can confirm this solves the initial poster’s problem every time for me:

Create an A Name *and* and PTR record for every client on your network, that matches the name of the client computer. I use statically assigned addresses for Mac clients on my Active Directory networks as well, which may also be a factor. There’s a resource kit utility that makes bulk creation of DNS records for Windows 2003 Server DNS a doddle.

[Steve120]

Thank you for your responses. I believe what problem was related to Time. We haven’t had as many Active Directory disconnects in a while. It turns out our NTPd server was not working and after a week the time would be off, resulting in the disconnection of AD. Thanks again for the help guys.

Apple Nerds Rock!
-Steve

[Author]

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