1. Introduction

I recently was assigned the task of joining a Debian server to a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory domain. Though most of the documentation I read for doing this was rather straightforward, 100% of that documentation turned out to be only 75% useful. While all were easy to follow, at the end of the day I found myself piecing together bits of information from all different sources. Only after deciphering cryptic log messages, consulting my colleagues, and experimenting did I finally have this working. Here I try to provide a complete walkthrough of this joining procedure, paying close attention to the often overlooked details I encountered in my trials.

I use:
Debian squeeze
samba 2:3.2.5-4l
winbind 2:3.2.5-4l
krb5-config 1.22
krb5-user 1.6.dfsg.4
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