Re: Default tombstone lifetime

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Absolutely certain Jorge. I'm using genuine VLK media, straight from
Microsoft.

I've since looked into this further, and I'm actually installing R2 (which
is based off Windows 2003 SP1 obviously). I believe that R2 has regressed
to the old 60 day behaviour even for a new forest.

I haven't tested it with just SP1 and NOT R2 yet, but I suspect that will
set it to 180 days. So, my theory is:

Windows 2000 - <not set>
Windows 2003 RTM - <not set>
Windows 2003 SP1 - 180
Windows 2003 R2 - <not set>

I believe when Microsoft modified the schema.ini file for R2 (which replaces
the one from SP1) they have forgotten to set the tombstone lifetime to 180
days.

Regards,
David

"Jorge de Almeida Pinto [MVP]"
<SubstituteThisWithMyFullNameSeparatedByDots@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23$twyEkrGHA.1140@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
joe is correct on this... <not set> means 60 days and nothing else

180 days is configured when the first DC in the forest is W2K3 SP1.
everything lower than that or upgraded to SP1 is 60 days.

ARE you sure the install media is sliptstreamed WITH SP1 and it is not
just W2K3 RTM?

--

Cheers,
(HOPEFULLY THIS INFORMATION HELPS YOU!)

# Jorge de Almeida Pinto # MVP Windows Server - Directory Services

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"David Chadwick" <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%231n9ITgrGHA.516@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Jorge,

Thanks for your reply.

I realise that this is how it works. My question was actually about how
AD determines whether the tombstone lifetime is 60 days or 180 days at a
technical level. If you read the technet link that I have in my first
post, you will see that it states that in BOTH situations (with or
without SP1) the tombstoneLifetime attribute is set to "<not set>".

My question or observation was that it must then mean that AD falls back
to some other method of determining whether it is 60 or 180 days and I
wanted to know what that method was.

Joe says that the documentation is wrong and that it actually does set
that particular attribute to 180 days (rather than "<not set>") if you
create a forest on a SP1 machine, but that is not what I am seeing. I've
tried it several times, all from clean genuine VLK media and that
attribute is NEVER set for me.

Cheers,
David


"Jorge Silva" <jorgesilva_pt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:evpYA7brGHA.4892@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi

In an Forest were you installed the 1st DC a Windows Server 2003 SP1he
new default tombstone-lifetime is tripled to 180 days. If you don't
dcpromo the forests first DC with SP1 already installed you'll still
have the default tombstone-lifetime of 60 days.


--
I hope that the information above helps you

Good Luck
Jorge Silva
MCSA
Systems Administrator

"David Chadwick" <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23k4d04JrGHA.3680@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,

This is a question out of curiousity rather than a desperate need to
know. :)

The following Technet link explains what the default tombstone lifetime
for a domain is:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/f3df8a52-81ea-4a1d-9823-4e51fbd3422a1033.mspx?mfr=true

The default value for "tombstoneLifetime" is "<not set>".

The thing I find strange is that "<not set>" could either be 60 days or
180 days, depending on whether your forest root was initially created
on Windows 2000/2003 RTM or Windows 2003 SP1.

My question is where does AD ultimately pull this information from?
What I am trying to ask is - imagine you create your forest root with
Windows 2003 RTM. It is now years later and all your DCs are Windows
2003 SP1. Your tombstoneLifetime is still "<not set>", and in this
particular instance "<not set>" means 60 days.

How does AD "know" that "<not set>" means 60 days rather than 180 days?
There must be another attribute somewhere which defines this default,
surely? How does AD determine whether it was "initially 2003 RTM" and
therefore decide that the tombstone lifetime is 60 rather than 180
days.

I'm really curious about this. :)

Cheers,
David











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Relevant Pages

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