In order to join your computer to active directory you will need to bind your computer using a utility called Directory Utility. This use to be located in the utility folder in 10.5 but it was moved to “/System/Library/CoreServices”. In order to access the utility you will need to access the menu item go when you are on finder and then select “Go To Folder”. Once you see the box below you will need to go to the location specified in the image below. “/System/Library/CoreServices/”
Once you are in the CoreServices folder you will find a large amount of applications. If you look for an Application called Directory Utility and open it. Directory Utility allows you to connect to services such as LDAP, Active Directory.
Now you are in the Directory Utility app please see below.
If you click Active Directory you will be presented with the following.
From here you simply need to add your FQDN for your active directory domain. Also a computer name you would like to register against active directory.
If you click the advance option you will see below.
The “force local home directory on a start up disk” is an important option which can cause issues if you have the wrong option set. If you have the option ticked anyone one who logs in will automatically have a local user account setup. So any work saved will be saved to the local user folder. Also the computer will mount the specified home directory within Active Directory. So users can easily transfer work to and from their network user area.
If the box is unticked then users will have their home drive on the mac pointing to their network home drive. So any work done within the user are on the logged in computer will be automatically saved to the users network drive.
*NOTE*
Home drive path is specified within Active Directory under home drive path. If you do not use this option you will not be able to use the unpicked option.
Now you have completed the advance options you can now click the bind button. You will be presented with the following box
You need to use the credentials of a user account which has write delegate access to the OU or container you wish to place the computer into active directory. You can specify the computer ou search path but you can leave this by default as it will place the computer into the Computers OU. So its important that the user account you want to bind with has write access to this OU.
Once you click OK with the correct settings your machine will now be connected to Active Directory. You can now login with an Active Directory Username / Password.
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