.local appeared when moving DNS to DSL router; new PC's can't join

[weigoldk]

I am helping out at a church/school on a network that is pretty dated. They have a server with Active Directory. A few months ago their DSL went down. The company installed a new router and that router is now doing the DSL role. Prior to that we had static addresses. When they did that, the domain took on a .local at the end of the name. So MyChurch became MyChurch.local. I just tried to join a PC to the domain, but I could not. The error said the domain could not be found. The existing PCs do (slowly) log into the domain.

The PC in question is a Win 7 Pro. I can ping the server that has AD installed. I can browse to and log into a network folder using AD credentials.

I know enough about servers and AD to be considered the "expert" at the church. I also know that I don't know much at all.

Any ideas on the .local?

We'd like the staff, students and faculty to log on to the network for the security and the advantages of network storage. We like the setup of having network home and shared folders and network printers. We like the option of using internal email. We have the exchange licenses--but we havn't done this for years so I could drop the exchange part. We have one server that is backed up and about 25 PCs. We have no current plans to expand this. Do I need AD?

 

[itsp1965]

From what I gather you had static IP addresses and therefore probably DNS was pointing to the domain controller. Your domain is most likely called mychurch.local as this didn't appear suddenly because of the introduction of the DSL router. What it sounds like is that the new router is doling out internal IP addresses and pointing to your ISPs DNS instead of the internal one which is why you are experiencing slow logons and unable to add machines to the domain.

 

[weigoldk]

OK that makes sense--by the way, thanks for your reply.


My church's domain was called mychurch before the new router. It took on the .local after the new router was installed. I have a feeling (cuz I'm doing most of this by feeling) that you are right on when you point to it being a DNS issue. I belive that I noticed my server had stopped being the DNS server for the network. I'm hoping to have time to work on this tomorrow. My thought is to set the IP address on the server to static (using the internal IP address that the new router likes) and then turning on DNS on that server. I'll keep the new router as the DHCP server. Does this sound like a good first plan?

 

[weigoldk]

I reinstalled DNS onto the server and it seemed happy. However in the DNS logs, there is an event: Event ID 800 The zone ChristEv is configured to accept updates but the A record for the primary server in the zone's SOA record is not available on this DNS server. This may indicate a configuration problem. If the address of the primary server for the zone cannot be resolved DNS clients will be unable to locate a server to accept updates for this zone. This will cause DNS clients to be unable to perform DNS updates.

So, it seems that my DNS settings are not yet correct.

My domain is still called mychurch.local

How do I get rid of the .local???

Hmmmm. As to the above error, I found these steps. Do I want to do this? My Forward Lookup Zones shows two records--same as partne folder Type Start of Authority (SOA) Data [1] server2.mychurch.local.,hostmaster.mychurch.local AND
same as parent folder, Type Name Server (NS) data server2.mychurch.local.

I found this on Microsoft's site

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/171789,

but I'm hesitant to do it in the current status of my network.

1.From DNS Manager, open your forward zone.
2.Right-click on the "A" record for your DNS server, and then click Delete Record.
3.Click Yes to confirm the deletion of the "A" record.
4.Right-click on the forward zone, and then click New Host.
5.Type the host name of your DNS server and the IP address.
6.Select the Create Associated PTR Record check box.
7.Click Add Host, and then click Done.