Today I’m installing Small Business Server 2008 for a client that has a bunch of Macs.
THE PROBLEM
The Small Business Server was delivered with a “partial install” of SBS2008 already complete. The challenge right now is that I cannot use the sbsanswerfile.xml to control the FULL INTERNAL DOMAIN name. My opinion: “this is either an oversight or mistake in SBS 2008 setup design”. The oversight being that the answer file cannot be called upon when “continuing setup” if a partial install has already been completed (this is even though the internal domain name has not yet been defined by the wizard).
The wizards allow the admin to define “only the secondary level domain name” (the vanity domain) and not the top level domain. The default top level domain in SBS, as a result of using the wizard, must then be .local . My opinion: “It would have been much better to allow the sbsanswerfile.xml to be called from the setup wizard upon continuation of an OEM based install.” This could provide more flexibility and be a 2nd option in addition to clean installs that call the sbsanswerfile.xml from the very beginning.
Anyone who does VAR based work for a living experiences these “partial complete installs” as common place when working with an SBS box from an OEM manufacturer (i.e. Dell, HP, etc…). So why kill all other possibilities on these boxes than .local for the top level of the FULL INTERNAL DOMAIN. Doing so leaves admins in the “real world” with no other option than the requirement of a complete re-install?
To review: use of the sbsanswerfile.xml is the only resource from which “the FULL INTERNAL DOMAIN (which includes the “top level domain) can be defined. The sbsanswerfile must be called from the very first stages of an SBS 2008 install or .local will be the top level domain internally.
THE CLIENT
So getting back to my client: It appears that we have no choice. A (.local) top level domain will “have to” be used for the internal domain because we’ve got an OEM partial install. Since we are installing for a client that has Macs, I would have far rather used the answer file and altered the internal domain name to companyname.pri . The reason is in relation to Rendevous (now called Bonjour) and Mac’s design that treats any request relating to a .local first level domain in the context of Rendevous (Bonjour).
Networking Windows .local and Apple Macintosh
What to do if .local has been used in Windows Network as the first level domain name of the Internal domain and you are deploying in an “Apple Mac centric” network with older Mac’s in the environment?
To help Mac DNS resolve .local Please read KB836413 – You receive an “unexpected error occurred” error message when you try to access resources on a Windows-based network from your Macintosh computer
content of KB Article
- .local Preferences adjustment: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2385?viewlocale=en_US
- Updating Mac OSX: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1338?viewlocale=en_US
- Apple Support: http://www.apple.com/support/