Join Ubuntu 8.04 To A Windows Domain

When my old boss at Websense first introduced me to the world of Linux, being from a Windows shop, I naturally asked him how to join my Linux workstation to the domain. He of course said, "Why would you want to do that? Don't taint the pureness of open source!" So I never pressed the issue.

That is, until yesterday afternoon. I decided to give it a go again, and I have to tell you they have made it really easy. I read some blog posts on this before, and it used to be kind of a pain in the arse to do it. Not any more with the use of LikeWise Open which is available in the Ubuntu repositories.

To install it and set it up, just do the following steps (Via AnotherSysadmin.Wordpress.Com):



1. sudo apt-get update
2. sudo apt-get install likewise-open
3. sudo domainjoin-cli join fqdn.of.your.domain Administrator
4. sudo update-rc.d likewise-open defaults
5. sudo /etc/init.d/likewise-open start

After that is done, you can log out, then log back in with your domain\username account (You have to add the domain\ first). Here is the beautiful screen shot of my Ubuntu machine in Active directory:





Pretty cool right? I bet you never knew it could be that easy to do. Try it yourself. Let me know how it goes in the comments.