5. Joining the FNAL NT Domain

In this chapter we describe the things that need to be done to get an account on the FNAL NT domain. Depending on your level of support, an NT administrator may take care of some or all of these tasks for you.

5.1 The Whole Story in a Nutshell

If you have a previously-used PC that must be reconfigured in order to join the FNAL NT domain, you'll need to contact the PCS group at pcs-group@fnal . Your "Whole Story" will depend on your initial configuration. Now, for the typical case:

You've just gotten a new PC. If you followed the purchasing recommendations, it already has Windows NT 4.0 Workstation installed on it. Now you've got to get it configured to work in the Fermilab network so that you can send and receive email, access the internet, print to networked printers, and so on. This involves getting an ethernet connection and an IP address. Beyond that, you've also decided to join the FNAL NT domain so that you can access the resources it provides and store your important documents in an area that gets backed up regularly. How do you get from here to there?

If you belong to a department or group that is fully supported by the PCS group, you may find that your PC gets ordered, delivered, and configured without any actions on your part. You probably will need to provide some information to your local server administrator or to your group's PC administrator, such as your preferred userid and necessary software, but all the work will be done for you.

Fully-supported users don't need to read any further in this chapter.

For those of you with a less-than-comprehensive support agreement, contact your group's PC administrator to find out what procedure you should follow. You should decide whether you want a file storage area on a server, or if you only need to access NT domain resources. Here's a summary of the information you may need to gather and the steps that you may need to take:

Choose a name for your computer (called a NetBIOS name 1 ) to identify it uniquely within the network and domain. Recommended naming conventions: start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, have as interior characters only letters, digits and hyphens; do not use slashes, underscores or other special characters. NT 4 imposes a 15 character limit.
Along with the NetBIOS name, be prepared to provide a descriptive comment to allow support personnel to identify the machine's location and primary user. Include the following information: your name, location, phone extension, and email address.
Choose the kind of IP address you want ( static IP or DHCP; see section 5.2: Do You Want a Static or Dynamic IP Address? ). Most people should use DHCP.
If you need to install Windows NT, incorporate the NetBIOS name and type of IP address into the configuration; if NT is already installed, change the setup to include this information.
Submit the Node Registration Form to register your machine on the network and to get a static IP address if that is what you want (this form requires the information mentioned above).
To join the FNAL NT domain, you'll need both a domain workstation account (to authorize your workstation to the domain) and a domain user account (to authorize access via your userid). If you have ever accessed the FNAL NT domain from a different machine, you probably already have an NT user account. To get a workstation account, send email requesting one to pcs-group@fnal.gov or to helpdesk@fnal.gov . Include in the email your name, phone extension and the machine (NetBIOS) name. To get a user account, submit the Request for NT Account form (see section 5.3: The Request for NT Account Form ).

5.2 Do You Want a Static or Dynamic IP Address?

An IP (Internet Protocol) address uniquely distinguishes your node from any other on the internet. Before submitting the Node Registration Form , you need to know what type of IP address you want. The address can be either dynamic or static; the differences and the pros and cons of each type are discussed in A. Dynamic Versus Static IP Addresses . Dynamic IP addresses are known as DHCP addresses (for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). You may want to check with your group's PC administrator to see what is recommended for your group or for your machine in particular. Generally, DHCP addresses are used. This is at least partly because NT networking has been built around the use of DHCP for workstations, and DHCP provides reliable and simple TCP/IP network connections.

You may want a static IP address, however, if you need to run a Web server or an ftp server on your machine. Your clients will need a stable address for accessing your server.

5.3 The Request for NT Account Form

The Request for NT Account form is used to request a user account on the FNAL NT domain. It is only one page long, and looks like this:

After you fill in the information and press Create , a page will come up which confirms the information you entered, and tells you that you'll receive notification when your account has been created.

Before you receive this notification, a folder with your name or logon id will appear in theUsers area of the server to which you get assigned. The PCS group will be creating a pcapps folder in your personal folder on the server. If you have been using the Eudora mail handler, a mail_enc folder will also get created.

5.4 Join the nt-user Mailing List

We have established a self-subscribing mailing list for providing information to NT domain users, nt-user@fnal.gov . Subscribers are sent email about newly available freeware, product upgrades, OS upgrades, patches, licensing issues, and general information about NT. We encourage you to subscribe! To do so, send email to mailserv@fnal.gov with no subject line, and the message content:

subscribe nt-user your_userid @fnal.gov

Do not include any other text in the message body.

1. In NT 5, this will change. NT 5 will no longer use NetBIOS, it will instead use DNS (Domain Name System) hostnames, which are essentially readable IP addresses (e.g., your_subdomain.fnal.gov ). In anticipation of NT 5, please choose your NetBIOS name according to our recommendations. Then when we upgrade, NT 5 will use your established NetBIOS name as the your_subdomain part of the DNS name.