domain setup question 1

[coondog]

At work we have a Win2000 domain server. I was wanting to setup a similar server at home to play with. Can I set it up with a fake domain name or do I need to shell out $30 or so and register a legitimate domain name to use on it? I am not really interested in setting up anything that will be web accesible from the outside right now. For now I just have it set up on a workgroup until I get this figured out on how to set it up on a domain. I should mention that at home I have 4 pc's networked to a router to share a cable modem, so I need to make sure that I don't create something that will interfere with real domain controlers. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[RLE]

If you have them in local you can use the domain name that you want, anyway is better if you use one nonexistent
domain name.

 

[CoolClark]

Just use the .local namespace.

 

[imatthec]

Your domain "." extension can be anything you'd like. You could make it .local as suggested or even .coondog

 

[hads]

Either that or not have a . at all.

I have set up heaps of sites with the domain as 'localdomain' it can save hassles with internal/external DNS.

So, as above, you can set it to anything you like.

01101000011000010110010001110011

 

[jefblack]

With internet connectivity, you don't want your DNS zone to be authoritative for the internet, so on your DNS server, delete the "." zone and set the properties of the server to use your ISP's DNS addresses as forwarders.

 

[coondog]

When I try to change from a workgroup to a domain called ".local" as suggested, I get the following error message:
The following error occured validating the name ".local".
The specified domain either does not exist or cannot be contacted.

This was the error that I was getting when I tried to initially setup the server on a fake domain. I am not sure what to try next?

 

[hads]

You can't just join a domain that doesn't exist, you must create it.

START > RUN > dcpromo

01101000011000010110010001110011

 

[coondog]

Thanks for the dcpromo suggestion. That's what I was missing.