Find the NetBios Name of a domain in AD

Its been quite a bit of struggle for me to find an accurate way of finding the netbios name of a domain from AD using System.DirectoryServices.

In case you are in the same jam here how you do it.

1. Connect to AD using the following ldap url:LDAP://CN=Partitions,CN=Configuration,DC=<DomainName>,DC=<local|com>
2. When querying AD using the Directory Searcher object uses the following filter:netbiosname=*

This should give you a record from AD containing the netbios name of the domain as the CN

Explanation

AD stores the the netbios name in the Partitions naming container which is stored inside the configuration naming container.

A more detailed explanation and more samples can be found in the Active Directory Cookbook or its online version

Code sample:

// Method call

string netBiosName = GetNetBiosName( LDAP://CN=Partitions,CN=Configuration,DC=<DomainName>,DC=<local|com>,  "<userName"", "<password>");

// Method call

 

// Method Definition

private string GetNetBiosName(
    string ldapUrl,
    string userName,
    string password)
{
  string netbiosName = string.Empty;
  DirectoryEntry dirEntry = new DirectoryEntry(ldapUrl, userName, password);

  DirectorySearcher searcher = new DirectorySearcher(dirEntry);
  searcher.Filter = "netbiosname=*";
  searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("cn");

  SearchResultCollection results = searcher.FindAll();
  if (results.Count > 0) {
    ResultPropertyValueCollection rpvc = results[0].Properties["CN"];
    netbiosName = rpvc[0].ToString();
  }
  return netbiosName;
}

Crossposted from tariqayad.com

posted on Thursday, July 30, 2009 8:46 AM