Troubleshooting NoMachine in a Active Directory Domain

When NoMachine (server) is already installed on a Active Directory Domain controller, depending on how AD is configured, next installations of NoMachine (server) on Linux domain clients being part of this AD environment may not work properly.

The installation of NoMachine on the AD controller creates the "nx" user which is added to the Domain Users database. This prevents the nx home directory from being created locally on the Linux domain client with proper rights, required for NoMachine to work correctly.

A symptom of this issue can be observed in the installation log file located in /usr/NX/var/log/nxinstall.log :

"User: nx is network user."

Important:

Installing NoMachine on AD controller can break existing NoMachine installations on some domain clients.

Possible alternative solutions:

1) If Centrify identity management system is used with AD

Add the nx user to the 'user.ignore' file.

Login as root:

$ sudo su

$ echo "nx" >> /etc/centrifydc/user.ignore

2) If SSSD Authentication is used with AD

Change the configuration in the sssd.conf file by adding this line:

use_fully_qualified_names = True

Important:
This disables possibility to connect to Domain User account with shortened name.

3) Uninstall NoMachine from the AD controller 

Last option is to uninstall NoMachine from the Windows AD controller host, if possible.