How the Domain Join Process works in Ghost Solution Suite

Products

• Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

The purpose of this article is to explain how Ghost Solution Suite performs its domain join process.  In explaining the process it is hoped that, if there is an issue, troubleshooting it will be easier.

Environment

Ghost Solution Suite 3.x all builds

Resolution

There are two methods for adding a managed machine to a domain through the Ghost Solution Suite console.  The first method is to right click on the managed machine and click on Configure.  The second method is to create a new job and add a Modify Configuration task.  With both options you will be presented with a new window.

Click on the Microsoft Networking option.  You'll be presented with the following page.

In the Domain: field add your domain.

For the right click Configure option when you click OK, the domain join process will immediately begin.  For the Modify Configuration job, you'll need to drag the job to the managed machine or the managed machine to the job and schedule it to run.  Once running however, the domain join process is the same.

1. The Ghost Solution Suite server will create a .cfg file
   1. The file will be called 5xxxxxxx.cfg based on the computer ID of the managed machine
   2. It will be placed in the Temp directory under the eXpress share
2. The Ghost Solution Suite will then notify the Dagent on the managed machine that there is work to do
3. The Dagent will be told to copy the .cfg file from the Temp directoy down to itself
   1. The Dagent will copy the file to the root of C:
   2. During the copy process, the file will be renamed to Aclient.cfg
4. The Dagent will then start the domain join process
   1. The Dagent reads the aclient.cfg file
   2. It makes specific WMI calls to join the machine to the domain
   3. If Dagent logging is enabled you'll see the function JoinDomainWMI being executed
5. If the domain join is successful the managed machine will reboot
6. If the domain join fails
   1. The Dagent will return, to the Ghost Solution Suite Console, the failure message
   2. To get more details it is recommended that a review of the netsetup.log file be done
      1. This file is located on the managed machine
      2. It can be found in the C:\Windows\Debug folder
      3. Scroll to the bottom and look for any errors
      4. Use the internet to get details on the errors