So, we have an ActiveDirectory domain at work “blah.local” on some sort of microsoft small business server or something. We also have a pile of linux virtual machines where all the fun stuff happens. They get IPs and external network connections and DNS resolution just fine from the windows DHCP/DNS server, but the machine names never get registers in DNS anywhere, so all of us internal users have to try and remember which IP address is which machine.

This is actually easy to fix, but it’s a little unusual. First, you will neeed the username and password of a user with domain admin rights. (You only need this to join the machine to the domain in the first place)

$ sudo apt-get install likewise-open
$ sudo domainjoin-cli join blah.local karlp
Joining to AD Domain:   blah.local
With Computer DNS Name: tinyweb.blah.local

karlp@BLAH.LOCAL's password: 
SUCCESS
You should reboot this system before attempting GUI logins as a domain user.
$ sudo lw-update-dns 
A record successfully updated in DNS
PTR records successfully updated in DNS
$ cowsay 'profit!!!!!'
 ____________
< profit!!!! >
 ------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||
$

You’ll now be able to use the machine names from any other machine in the network that’s using the windows dns server