the forum is here for other to see and learn from the troubleshooting done publicly.

as for the xAMP service - Apache, PHP and MySQL are very easy to install under windows. just look at the XAMPP packega from apachefriends, or get them separately and install. the web is full of tutorials. no need for IIS there.

about the domain issue:
setting up a domain in w2k3 is a breeze - just type dcpromo in the command line and the wizard will do everything.

external domain users might be slightly harder to implement, because that will mean you either stick the server out into the internet with the RPC port open (not wise at all) or set up VPN services, for the clients do dial in before the log onto the domain.
setting up win2k3 as a VPN+Radius server is easily googlable as well.

the question is - what do you need external users to join the domain for?

I agree with all of this. A domain is easy to set up, but there are a few requirements you need to cover. I also agree that, before you join any clients to the domain, do you know what you are getting yourself into? If you are officially supporting clients, then you should probably learn more about AD before joining hosts to your domain. If it is just for your own research then read on!

Know your AD context: using contexts like "mysubdomain.<some external address>.edu would be a bad idea. Just use a one word context <lab> or something simple to start. The context is critical for AD and DNS to work smoothly. You can always fix it later if you get serious. Too many <this>.<that>.com stuff makes it harder to get DNS and AD authentication to work.

A few things on joining hosts to the domain: Always make a backup admin account before adding hosts to clients! First thing to look at is time. Make sure your DC and hosts have the correct time...read up on AD time functions and how to check time services on your DC. The next thing to check is DNS on all your hosts. You should be able to ping your DC by name, assuming it is physically connected correctly directly through a switch and set as the DNS server for your hosts. Or some other effective configuration is set up. You didn't say anything about DNS or whether you were using DHCP. Those are considerations. Once you establish that DNS is working on the local clients, try to authenticate to a resource on the DC with domain admin rights. Make sure you map as <your domain's local context>\<user>!

DimaYasny is right, connecting people remotely to the domain is a lot of work when you can just use something like RDP or VNC to connect to systems as needed. But I have also run production environments where I needed to have rights to perform repetitive tasks on machines, so I can relate to wanting to have that capability - it's optimal for support. VPN is all you'd really need there.

I will check out apachefriends and try to set thatup. I have setup VPN so that's good to go.


As of the domain controller, the issue is not setting up the domain controller but getting internal computers to connect to the server. For some reason it just wont join the domain.

My network is as follows

ISP->Router (192.168.0.1)->Nic1Server (192.168.0.10)

NIC2 is configured on the server with an ip address of 10.200.200.14 and acts as a dhcp and provides IP's to VPN clients.


The problem is if I ping the serverName (Host) on the server it pings the 10.200.200.14 address rather then the 192.168.0.1 address

And my computers are all on the 192.168.0.x address range



*And please note this Server is just for my personal learning and usage

disable the 10.x.x.x NIC - there is no need for it

Once you get your DNS and DHCP working properly you should have no problems joining workstations to the domain.

Okay so I disabled the 2nd interface. I re-created the domain controller, and still can't get it to work. So here is my setup.


I have a linksys router which gives out the ip addresses of 192.168.0.*

My Windows 2003 Server has been assigned the ip address of 192.168.0.10 from my linksys router, I have set the dns on my windows 2003 server as 127.0.0.1

I have taken out dhcp, since my linksys router gives out the ip addresses..

ok
disable dhcp on the router
set up dhcp on the server for 192.x.x.x network
make sure your server is pointing to it's own 192.x address as dns
make sure other stations' DNS is pointing to the server's 192.x address

review the server's DNS to make sure it is useing the 192.x interface and not the 10.x

Okay, I got about 90% of it working now. Just cant connect the pc to the domain

SERVER INFO:
computer name: host
domain: autoacquire.local

PC:
I can ping host.autoacquire.local
I can RDP host.autoacquire.local or 192.168.0.10
But I can't connect to it as a domain, Please look at the below screen shot
Internet works fine

Screenshot:
http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/8...eenshotmn3.jpg

The server should *not* be receiving IP from your router. Statically assign the IP. Your DNS looks to be working so it looks like a matter of your AD context. Instead of trying to connect to "autoacquire.local" try putting "autoacquire". This is the context stuff I spoke of earlier:

Know your AD context: using contexts like "mysubdomain.<some external address>.edu would be a bad idea. Just use a one word context <lab> or something simple to start. The context is critical for AD and DNS to work smoothly. You can always fix it later if you get serious. Too many <this>.<that>.com stuff makes it harder to get DNS and AD authentication to work.

A few things on joining hosts to the domain: First thing to look at is time. Make sure your DC and hosts have the correct time...read up on AD time functions and how to check time services on your DC. The next thing to check is DNS on all your hosts. You should be able to ping your DC by name, assuming it is physically connected correctly directly through a switch and set as the DNS server for your hosts. Or some other effective configuration is set up. You didn't say anything about DNS or whether you were using DHCP. Those are considerations. Once you establish that DNS is working on the local clients, try to authenticate to a resource on the DC with domain admin rights. Make sure you map as <your domain's local context>\<user>!

...when you map a resource (AD network share/printer/server)"across domains" you can specify credentials for that domain when you map: net use * \\server\c$ /user:domain\userid

This is helpful because once you've made a successful connection to a resource you should have no problems joining the domain. Either you're not authenticating the context properly or your IP/DNS/DHCP configuration is still incorrect.