Primary Domain Controller (PDC) : WINS or not WINS?

[Frederic Denis]

Please allow me, somewhat newbie to OS X Server, to post here a message I’ve posted also in Apple Discussion Forums. Haven’t got any answer yet there, so I’d like to see if someone will be able to enlight me here instead:

When I promote a server to be a Primary Domain Controller, do I *need* to designate the server as a WINS server as well (considering there’s no other server on the network acting as one)? Or can I leave it off?

See, I’ve been trying to join a Win XP Pro laptop to the domain of the newly-promoted PDC, but I keep getting an error stating there’s no SRV record in DNS for _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs..

I thought, since the error is so clear, that I could add the SRV record manually, but then thought, if it’s not added automatically by ServerAdmin, maybe there’s something wrong going on.

I’ve read this post:

forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-67102.html

… Which seems to say the problem is actually in OS X. And they recommend to turn on WINS, although this is at a price of lower security. And since I’ve been told for the past 6 years than been paranoid is cool, I kinda not like that 🙂

So?

1. WINS or no WINS?

2. If no WINS is ok, is it possible something’s wrong in my config that prevents ServerAdmin to add the SRV record to the DNS config?

3. If no WINS, and it’s normal there’s no SRV records automatically added in the DNS, what other SRV record beside LDAP should I enter manually? kerberos? kpasswd? other?

(ps: I’m relunctant to go with a solution that would require me to buy Windows Server, and thus learn to configure it: I’ve bought Mac OS X server thinking it would be a one-stop shopping for my server needs, and still hope I can work it out with it alone)

Thanks in advance…

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