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If I try to browse to our namespace, let's say \\local.lan I don't see the namespaces. They should be like:

\\local.lan\

  • department1
  • department2
  • department3

But if I try to browse through the directories I just see:

\\local.lan\netlogon

\\local.lan\sysvol

The department shares are invisible.

If I try to enter them while using the full path it works perfectly like:

\\local.lan\department1
\\local.lan\department2
\\local.lan\department3

I want to give our users the ability to just browse through the directories. We have a paralell installation on windows 2008 with the exact same config and it seems to work perfectly over there. The difference is that on the Win2008 system the DFS system/dfs root is configured on a Domain Controller....

Ryan Ries
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supreme
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    The question is good, but I had to edit it to make it more readable. In the future, to maximize your chances of getting good answers to your questions, please take the time to use appropriate markup and grammar. Thank you. – Ryan Ries Nov 18 '13 at 17:23
  • Did you create them as domain-based namespaces? – joeqwerty Nov 18 '13 at 17:49
  • yes, domain based. – supreme Nov 18 '13 at 19:13
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    `The difference is that on the Win2008 system the DFS system/dfs root is configured on a Domain Controller` - That is the key point. When a user visits `\\local.lan` they are are seeing the shares/resources available on one of the domain controllers. DFS roots do not magically show up in that list. – Zoredache Nov 18 '13 at 19:38
  • so a namespace on a NON-DC Server will never show up ? is there a way to "unhide" them ? 2nd, is there a way to hide sysvol/netlogon ? – supreme Nov 18 '13 at 21:25
  • @Zoredache - That's not exactly true. Accessing the namespace via "\\domain.tld" will yield no results but accessing the namespace via "\\domain.tld\namespace" will. – joeqwerty Nov 18 '13 at 23:26
  • @joeqwerty I am confused, what part of what I said wasn't true? You seem to have just repeated what I said? `\\domain.tld` is not a DFS name space. `\\domain.tld` is just a view of one of the domain controllers. – Zoredache Nov 19 '13 at 00:04
  • @Zoredache - I was trying to make the distinction that a domain-based namespace is available via "\\domain.tld\namespace" as opposed to a stand-alone namespace available via "\\servername\namespace". – joeqwerty Nov 19 '13 at 00:07
  • i just solved it by myself. i added the dfs namespace services to the domain controller; after that i added the Domain controllers to to the dfs namespace servers, now everybody can browse through the namespaces. – supreme Nov 20 '13 at 16:39

1 Answers1

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This was not designed to work that way.
\\domain.tld is not a DFS it is just a view of the domain. It probably works on the other installation because the DC hosts the DFS and You see the shares used for the DFS. I've done some testing and depending if a DC is hosting a DFS namespace I got different results. I just tried start -> run \\domain.tld on different servers / DC in same domain and I got different results. When I tried this directly from DC that was not a namespace server I saw only NETLOGON and SYSVOL

I think You should redesign Your DFS and and have Your users remember that link:
\\domain.tld\YOUR_DFS_NAMESPACE instead of \\domain.tld
You can nicely link folders there or build subfolders tree on a single dfs namespace.

and map \\domain.tld\YOUR_DFS_NAMESPACE through GPO preference.

the alternative is to add every DC as a namespace server and You will get what You are looking for however this is not how it was designed to work.

Bartłomiej Zarzecki
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