NT requires you to see the PDC in certain cases, because the BDCs are basically read-only replicas of the PDC. One of those cases is setting the machine password, which is done when the server (NT or filer) is installed, then once a week (Sunday morning at 2 or so). You will have to make the PDC visible at least temporarily to install the filer. After that, it will keep pestering you because it won't be able to do the periodic machine account password update. This is really an issue with NT networking. You would have the same problem trying to install an NT member server in the same situation.
There are probably some reasonable ways around this problem; your situation is not that unusual. The details depend on what you are trying to accomplish. You should probably work with customer support to see what makes most sense. You will also probably want 5.3, since it preferentially connects to domain controllers based on the IP address, which would mean it would always use the local BDC except for changing the passwords.
By the way, you'll find that if your Windows clients cannot see the PDC they will not be able to change their login passwords from their workstations for the same reason: they have to be able to contact the PDC to do that.
Mark Muhlestein -- mmm@netapp.com
-----Original Message----- From: Jaye Mathisen [mailto:mrcpu@internetcds.com] Sent: Thursday, April 29, 1999 1:20 PM To: Puneet Anand Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: How to use CIFS if PDC not on same lan?
The PDC is not IP reachable from the filer. The filer is on a private backbone, serving NFS/CIFS clients off secondary ethernet interfaces.
The BDC happens to be one of those clients.
And it has 2 interfaces...
On Thu, 29 Apr 1999, Puneet Anand wrote:
Is the PDC registering with the same WINS ? Hopefully yes. We do need PDC for installation.If this is ONTAP 5.1 or later ,you can run cifs testdc command with the following options to troubleshoot.
cifs testdc <wins_ip> <domain_name> <filer_name>
-Puneet __________________
Jaye Mathisen wrote:
I have 2 sites. Site B has a BDC for a domain, and the Netapp. Site A connected via T1 has the PDC.
When I try to run CIFS setup, it gets to the part about needing to reach the PDC and can't find it, so it aborts.
I'm not sure why it can't just do whatever it needs to do with the BDC right there (running WINS)...
Perhaps I need to add some key to WINS for the netapp to see it?