AD Bound Macs issue (dsconfigad -namespace forest)

[Kaltsas]

Is anyone running an environment where you are binding your machines to AD and setting the -namespace flag to forest instead of domain? In our environment (where macs were not previously bound to AD) we have users with conflicting user names in multiple domains. I had a script that reorganized the authentication search order but this was an issue if a user wanted to log into their account from multiple domains on the same system.

Everything seems to work swimmingly when this is configured to forest instead of domain except I'm having an issue with Microsoft Excel, that I'm pretty confident is a bug, but I wanted to see if anyone else had experienced it.

Microsoft Excel cannot save or open files when the user directory is DOMAINuser. It reports an error cannot access the file 'Macintosh HD:Users:DOMAINuser:Desktop:38845000'

The same sort of issue is presented in PowerPoint. Word, however is fine.

I'm pretty sure it's hanging up on the DOMAINuser in Excel and Powerpoint, no other office applications exhibit this issue. They can save and access files within the userspace fine.

I was curious if there was anyone else out there that had conflicting usernames in multiple domains that either set this to forest, or if you have conflicting usernames in multiple domains how you dealt with that being set to domain.

Thanks,

-alex-

[Kaltsas]

Microsofts KB stats don’t use the following characters in a file name

> (greater-than sign) / (forward slash) (backward slash) : (colon) | (pipe)

Which precludes setting the –namespace forest flag for AD Binds in our environment. So Apple has a setting for a multi-domain environment with convicting usernames in multiple domains that breaks the most commonly used applications in an environment that is most likely to use those applications.

*sigh*

Back to my script that reorganizes the authentication search order.