he1ix' blog

1. take a windows-machine of your choice
2. click on “start”
3. right-click “computer”
4. choose “manage” (“verwalten” if locale=DE)
5. authenticate if necessary
6. right-click “computer management (local)”
7. choose “connect to a different computer”
8. enter the DNS-name of the target machine
9. wait for connection
10. go to “System Tools” -> “Local Users and Groups” -> “Groups”
11. double-click “Remote Desktop Users”
12. click “Add”
13. add the desired user

OPSI

to list all available domains in an AD forest (e.g. to figure out their NetBIOS names and/or map them to DNS-FQDN), have a look at the search base “CN=Partitions,CN=Configuration,“, e.g.:

ldapsearch -x \
    -b "CN=Partitions,CN=Configuration,dc=my,dc=domain,dc=local" \
    -D "ldap@my.domain.local" \
    -h my.domain.local  \
    -W "(name=*)"

Note: accessing the global catalog (see ActiveDirectory and the global catalog) of your AD using port 3268 will return the domain-partitions, but the important attributes like “nETBIOSName” and “dnsRoot” will be missing there!

At work, we’re running a 2008R2 AD forest containing 5 sub-domains. now to query the LDAP can be a pity if you don’t know in which one of the overall 6 domains the queried object is located.

After months of helplessness and various (unsuccessful) experiments with meta-directories, ldap-proxies etc. we discovered that the problem is already solved. the solution is to use a different port, ActiveDirectory provides the so-called “global catalog” (containing all the information from the whole forest) on port 3268.

Assume, your username is “un321” and your account is located in the “it” subdomain of the “ads.forest.private” domain. To query for a user called “ab123” use the following ldapsearch-command:

ldapsearch -x -b "dc=ads,dc=forest,dc=private" -D 'un321@it.ads.forest.private' \\
        -h ads.forest.private -p 3268 -W  "(userPrincipalName=ab123*)"