Resara Server – An alternative opensource Linux domain controller for Windows Active Directory Controller

Resara Server is an Active Directory compatible open source server for small businesses designed around Samba 4. It is designed to be simple and easy to use. The management console lets you manage users, share files, and configure DHCP and DNS. It is built upon Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and quite easy to configure.

But a sad information, the Resara LLC is closed and it promises that a Open source version will be released shortly (See the announcement). Hope it will come soon. But it is a cool distribution for the system admins one who get troubles with viruses and malwares in windows platform. I am not against Microsoft Products; but i suggest you this distribution will help you out to setup ADC in Linux platforms too. Just make a try.

Installation of Resara Server:

Download the Resara server edition and boot the system with DVD or ISO. Click Forward in the welcome screen.

Select your Location and click Forward:

Select the Keyboard layout and click Forward:

Select the hard disk to be used to install. Make sure the hard disk hasn’t any data’s and click Forward:

Create default user and click Forward:

Make sure your selections and click Forward to begin install:

Now the installer begins:

At the end of installation click Reboot:

Now the system will be rebooted and enter the user-name and password which you created early:

Configure the Active Directory Controller:

Now the configuration section begins. The Resara Server Admin console will automatically open at the first login. Click Next:

Enter the IP address, Subnet and other details for your Network interface and click Next:

Make sure the correct Timezone and Date and time of your Location and click Next:

Enter the server name, domain name and full domain name and click Next:

Enter the Administrator password and click Next:

Select the Check-box “Enable DHCP Server” if you wish to act this server as DHCP server and click Next:

 

Now the system will be configured as per your needs:

After completing the Configure process, click Finished:

Now the Main Admin Console will open. There are 7 sections available here such as Users, Computers, Shares, Storage, DHCP, DNS and Server. Let us see one by one.

Users:

In this section you can create OU(Organizational Unit), Groups and Users like in Windows ADC:

Let us create some OU’s, Groups and Users for our new Active Domain Controller. Click “Add” in the lower left corner of the console window and click “New OU'” to create an OU.

Create Users and Groups respectively as stated above:

Computers:

This section shows you the OU’s which you created in Users section. You can create additional OU by clicking “Add” button if you wish:

Shares:

This section will allow you how to create shares to the users and groups:

You can map this shares to available as drives in windows clients:

Ana also you can set the permissions to the shares:

Storage:

In this section you can add additional drives if you have more than one hard drive:

DHCP:

You can enable/disable the DHCP server role in this section. And you can set the primary network interface to distribute ip addresses to the clients:

DNS:

This section shows the DNS settings of your server. You can use this server to act as a DNS server for your network:

Server:

This is the last section in the console window. You can set the following in this section:

• Date and Time

This tab shows you your current Timezone, Date and Time.

• Logs

This will show the logs. You can troubleshoot or do some necessary changes using the logs present here.

• Network Settings

You can set the IP, subnet and DNS details for your each Network interface here.

• Password Policy

In this section you can set the password policies for the Users and Groups or you can break the password policy by uncheck the “Force complex passwords”.

• Status:

This section shows you the System OS details, Date/Time, Primary Network card details and System Configuration details. Also you can do Reboot/Shutdown the server or Restart the services DNS, DHCP and Samba roles in this section.

Now Goto your Windows client, Open the My Computer properties and change the domain name(i.eOSTECHNIX.COM). It will ask you the username and password to join to the corresponding domain. Enter the username and password which you created in the “Users” section. Thats it. Reboot your windows client. Now the system will log in to your newly created Domain Controller.
If you have doubt how to Join your windows clients to the Domain Controller, please check this link.