Snow Leopard – The Journey to Find the Directory Utility
Today I was immersed in Snow Leopard,
I would like to start off by saying I am very pleased with the speed improvement in this system. Finder itself looks to have gotten a great speed boost and most of the core apps I tried launched within 2 bounces. Today, I spent the whole day with the new operating system Installing, Troubleshooting, and using it.
I had two Mac Pro’s one new and one from about a year ago, both needing to be upgraded to Snow Leopard and both needing to be bound to our windows network. The upgrade on both machines went smooth but on one machine I had to migrate the users data back onto it from a clone I made before the upgrade procedure. Migration couldn’t have been easier it even transfered the CS3 design premium. I then found out that the migration assistant also cause a few of the migrated apps to stop working. Klondike, IMovie, and Illustrator had all quit working. But that was not a big deal to fix, I simply removed their preferences and they launched. My next step however, proved to be more difficult than expected. I had to bind the computers to our Windows domain so that the users could access all of our internal resources.
Normally, I just open the utilities folder, open the Directoy Utility and Setup the Active Directory Portion. Viola! Done. Well… not that easy this time.
In Apple’s defense it is a ton easier and more logical the way they have it now but it sure did cause me about 5 minutes of grief as I tried to search spotlight for directory… yeah there where a ton of results 
I even downloaded Pacifist and tried to install the Directory Utility that way. But alas I could never get it to work. So I went to the second machine and it wasn’t on it either. So now I knew there wasn’t something wrong with my install as these where two separate installs. So then I started digging through the new features page at Apple.com and saw the new ICal integration. So I opened ICal and Ahoy… there is a connect to an exchange server option.. whoohoo I thought. So I went through the motions setting this up and it sure did pull in the calendar of the user and even associated Mail to their username. But alas there was still no connection to log-in users to the domain. So my next step lead me to the system preferences and Accounts tab. and finally at the bottom right of the login options screen I found an item that said “Network Account Server” so I clicked it and there was my directory utility. Finally I Found it, plugged in the info and then it worked like normal.
I will try to post some pics tomorrow, I am sorry I don’t have them tonight I just thought it would be best to get this info out there just in case there was a user going through the same problems as me.
Thanks for reading
David Bates
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- This is the dialog you fill in for Active Directory
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- Directory Utility
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- This is the dialog if you click the plus sign
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- Click the plus sign to add a domain or click Open Directory Utility for more adjustments
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- Network Account Server
Thank you so much! I just spent the last hour trying to find this damn thing to enable root. Very useful info, cheers!
Nordin
Thanks for your Snow Leopard – The Journey to Find the Directory Utility post. I am in deed the person that you wrote it for. I do desktop support for 300 local and remote employees at the corporate home. We were a 100% Windows shop until this year. My manager was all Windows, and would not support Apple, no how, no way. Then, our marketing department got fed up with the crappy response of our Windows PCs when trying to run Adobe Creative Suite Design Premium. There was mutiny in the air, and my manager said, Okay. You can buy Macs and an Apple server, but IT will not support you. You’ll have to get your own server admin. And, they did. There were no more problems with Creative Suite after that, although the Apple server has had its issues on the Windows domain from time to time, of which my manager would smirk and say, “Not my problem. Talk to the Apple admin.”
Somewhere around the beginning of 2009, our corporate head of IT went on vacation and his Windows laptop died in his arms. He tried to buy another Windows laptop, but ran into so much ineptness and frustration with the vendors he was dealing with, that he started looking at Macs. He came back with a MacBook and was talking like a true believer who just got healed at a revival. The next thing I knew, my It manager got a MacBook, and the two of them were running the Apple Underground at work. They wanted to convert as many people as possible to Macs, and they did not have any formal corporate approval. They were letting anyone who needed a new PC or laptop try out a Mac first before buying a Windows box. It was the old puppy dog approach. Meanwhile, my manager was trying out every kind of Mac software available as well as VM Ware and Parallels to accommodate any Windows only apps that certain departments use. About four months ago, my manager told me that I was going to need to start taking over the Mac setup and support because it was getting to be too much for him to do with his normal duties, and it fit my job description. I told him that that was all well and good, but I had never used a Mac, and if I was going to be supporting Macs now, I would need a Mac to use. So he bought me a MacBook. I read some Dummies books and got familiar with the OS X Leopard desktop. I already had some experience with Linux. I learned how to setup my MacBook on our Windows network, and everything was moving along on the Mac front. We still have only about 12 -15 people on Macs as of today. My manager setup all of them and I’ve learned to troubleshoot them for the most part, although they don’t really have many problems, except when it is related to the Windows domain. Snow Leopard came out and I’ve been through the update process, and I’m really getting hooked on Macs. Mine hasn’t crashed once since I’ve had it. My boss has become an Apple guru. He is so proud that he has absolutely no Microsoft applications on his Mac and gets his work done anyway.
This week, he gave me my first IMac to setup by myself. It was so easy, that I made it harder than it was. I plugged it in, turned it on and it just did everything that I wanted to do, except that I couldn’t figure out how to join it to the domain. So, I searched and searched for that info, and everything I read referred to files and folders that didn’t exist when I went to find them. Then I gave up for a while and looked around some more myself. It seemed that the IMac had already found my domain without my help. I went into the Network settings, and there was my domain showing. I thought maybe I just didn’t quite understand Mac completely, but I thought, why not just try to connect to our network applications and see what happens? So I setup Entourage, and it worked fine with our Exchange server. I wondered why Windows made joining a domain such a manual operation, when this IMac had done it without me asking. Anything that normally would work after joining a PC to a Windows domain was working without any effort on the IMac. I thought, “My God! They’ve out-Windowed Windows! Surely I must be missing something.” So, I setup the printers for this employee, and the printer list was available from our print server. It was reading the printer list right off of the print server on the secondary domain controller without blinking an eye! I setup all of the network printers without a problem and they worked from the get go. But, I was still bothered that I didn’t have to do anything to join it to the domain. Everything I know about PCs was that I had to join them to the domain, and all of the info about Mac had told me that they could be joined to a domain, but I could never figure out where to do it at. Then, I found your posting. It all makes since to me now. Except, when I go to the directory utility, there is no dialog to fill in and Active Directory is already enabled. So, the new Snow Leopard software did indeed, connect to the Windows domain on its own, if I’m understanding this correctly. Did you know that it can do that now? I still feel like I need to be doing more than that, but I’ve been dealing with Windows for too long. Am I crazy?
Whatever I am, I’m really liking my MacBook with Snow Leopard. I quit Entourage and started using the Mail client. It works fine and I can search my global address book now. I’ve got VM Ware Fusion with Windows, so that I can support both Mac and Windows from my Mac. After all, I still have to support 280+ Windows users. But, I plan on bringing that number down sooner rather than later. My manager did a cost analysis for owning a PC and a Mac. Mac won, hands down. With Mac, I don’t have to constantly reimage machines because the OS has crapped out for no reason, or because of viruses, or simple hardware failure. With Windows PCs, I frequently feel like my days consist of trying to hold up the sky. There’s always something crapping out, or crashing or acting loopy at the worst possible times. My Macs, just go. The only calls I get for them, are basic how to questions.
Thanks for thinking of people like me when you created that post! I was about ready to slit my wrists looking for that directory utility.
David Brogdon
WOW! such a nice comment. thank you very much for placing it on my blog.
I have tried for years to get my company to think outside the windows box but they never would listen… until recently. Macs are starting to infiltrate the enterprise, everywhere I go people are talking about the mac as though it were a taboo subject. I recently jumped ship from IT to Marketing and can say that in the marketing world Mac’s are more cost effective and reliable. We now have several Macs within our company that 10 years ago would be taboo. Knowing macs are a definite plus in the IT world hiring managers are looking for people who are considered to be a triple threat(windows, linux, mac). matter of fact knowing the mac operating system has given me a leg up in any job I’ve had. I am glad this post was so helpful to you. I think all bloggers strive to help people by posting these things. It make me feel good to know it actually did help.
Now down to the technical… depending on your network settings mac’s can detect that they are on a corporate network but normally binding a computer to the domain requires the actions mentioned in my blog as binding normally requires a special user-name and password. now if you had turned on networking logging and logged in with that special user-name and pass, I don’t know if it would auto-bind. I have never witnessed it. I would in fact say that you may be connected to the network and using resources alloted from the network but may not actually be bound to the network. The best way to tell is to search ad for the computer name. if it doesn’t show up your not bound.
Thanks again
David Bates
Cheers David
I’m a pc/mac tech who classically refuses to read manuals or buff on new releases! This however puts me in the dark when apple go and move Directory utility…
Thank you for making your knowledge available where so many others have just not bothered.
Thanks David, you have saved me several sleepless nights dreaming about lost Directory Utility.
David,
Thanks for the article, saved me a few.
Brogdon,
At the risk of sounding like a MAC hater your take on integration is a bit glowing. We’ve had a few areas where it isn’t so smooth. This isn’t just me, there are many posts out there about SMB issues and lost AD settings. The problems have remained through a few version of MAC OS as well. Not saying your story isn’t true just want people to know it isn’t all peaches N cream.
I am having trouble connecting to a windows domain. I am not sure what I should type in for the domain name.
That should be provided by your system administrator.
Yes I agree there are and can be several integration issue. Active directory is a beast in itself and there is no telling how some group policies will affect the mac. I will say that the latest snow leopard has been easier than any previous os version to tie to a domain. A couple of things that I encounter a lot are time syncs, group policies that affect networking or outlook, and getting keychain to keep a users credentials stored. So thank you for you comment but I still believe that it is now easier than ever.
Our school just finished upgrading our servers to 10.6 and although we are a mixed client environment we have successfully removed all Windows based servers from our environment. All authentification and management of our Windows clients are handled by Apple Servers. It took a great deal of the complexity out of our network setup and has made our jobs much easier. We were 100% PC 2 years ago. If you have the option to make the switch, I would take it.
Thank you for this, just wanna letcha know I bookmarked to ur blog too……thnks =)
A search for “directory utility” doesn’t show up in Spotlight but “directory” indeed shows the Account pref panel.
Now after three major updates it does. Thanks for the comment.