how to join a windows domain with mac 10??

Or use DAVE to join a domain if you're not that technical, it basically does the same, but it has a graphical interface...

If you have Active Directory set up it is fairly straightforward to get your Mac to join the domain using the AD plugin. Use Directory Access which is in Applications/Utilities

All you need is your AD administrator password to bind your mac to the domain.

i had setup active directory in my windows 2003,,,
mac has ad plugin??? whats the name of that?

i had OSX 10.3, after i startup, i don't know where is the Applications/Utilities ,,

i just figure it out where that ad plugin is,, but when i type in all the info, it still can't join the domain,
it says: Invalid domain, an invalid domain and forest combination was specified......

my windows 2003 server named server.domain.local
the domain is domain.local,
what should i put in for active directory forest in adplug?

I know that there are issues in binding to AD if you are using the .local domain. There is an in-depth discussion on the Macwindows site here

http://www.macwindows.com/AD.html

I would first check that Reverse DNS is set up on all domain controllers - I was getting the same error as you when I first tried and that was because I didn't have Reverse DNS. But I wasn't using .local so there may be other issues.

There is also a new Apple Knowledge Base article on how to do lookups on .local names here

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107800

Howard Phillis has the best answer I've seen for these problems, and his answers it makes sense:-) Great job howardphillis!! Now for my question on my mac server, panther server. When I do a nslookup I get the IP address but can not find server name for 192.168.1.5. Do you have answer for me sir? This happens on both XP and Mac machines.

I'm sorry I didn't finish. I believe it's an DNS problem and what is the fix?

Dear howardphillis;

I have Mac OSX 10.3.5 running on a powerbook G4 and have been searching throughout for a detailed/step by step paper on how to setup my Mac to work with Active Directory on SBS2003 without having a Mac OSX server. The environment we have in the office is fairly simple, 50 WIN PCs, 1 Mac PowerBook G4, 1 F/P Win2K Server and 1 SBS 2003 "test" Server.  I have read your answers to the topic above, and followed your steps using the Directory Access program, however my Mac fails to "Bind" and I beleive that this is due to the fact that I have not configured Active Directory properly. After trying to bing and using "company.lanl" for both the forest and domain name, the prompt I get is "An invalid Domain and Forest combination was specified.  You should enter a fully qualified DNS name for the domain and forest (e.g., ads.company.com)."  We only have only one domain setup up under this specific format "company.lan" (so as not to have problems with Mac and .local). We do not have any prefix before "company.lan" in the domain name.

I would appreciate if you can help me with the following:
A- send me details/paper on how to configure Active Directory on SBS2003 to work with Mac 10.3.5 or 10.3.3
B- Then, how to setup and configure the Mac notebook to authenticate and log on to Active Directory.  PS I can currently share files with the SBS2003 shared folder since I have enabled Mac File Serivices on the SBS2003 server, but I am not too sure if this helps much.

The objective is to install Active Directory and then make Entourage 2004 work with Exchange 2003.
Thank you in advance for the helping hand.

I've never actually tried it with SBS2003 but I don't imagine it should be that different from w2k server. The error message you receive is, I believe, normally caused by not having Reverse DNS set up for all your domain controllers - just make sure there is a PTR record for all DCs in the Reverse Lookup Zone. If that is all set up correctly and you still can't bind then I'm not sure what the problem might be.
If you can bind, all you need to do is go into the Contacts and Authentication tabs of Directory Access, change your search base to Custom Path and add your AD.
I hope this helps

Hi Howradphillis;
thank you for replying back.  I did not have a PTR record setup in my reverse DNS, so I added that in the DNS tool.  I would like to know if the points I mentioned below are a possible cause for binding errors.

On my SBS2003, under the TCP/IP properties, do I use the IP address of the SBS server as the Preferred DNS server and leave Alternate DNS server blank, or do I populate the Preferred and Alternate DSN servers with the IP addresses given by our ISP?

And, I am using a wireless network to connect my Mac.  Do I change the DNS settings (under Airport settings)  to include the IP of the SBS2003 Server or do I use the DNS settings of the ISP?

thank you.