I found the following in the logs: [2023/02/23 16:41:40.016934,? 1] ../../lib/crypto/gnutls_error.c:114(_gnutls_error_to_werror) ? drsuapi_encrypt_attribute_value: GNUTLS ERROR: GNUTLS_E_UNWANTED_ALGORITHM, WERROR: WERR_INTERNAL_ERROR at ../../libcli/drsuapi/repl_decrypt.c:268 [2023/02/23 16:41:40.016952,? 0] ../../source4/rpc_server/drsuapi/getncchanges.c:705(get_nc_changes_build_object) ? Unable to encrypt unicodePwd on CN=krbtgt,CN=Users,DC=privatedomain,DC=com in DRS object - WERR_INTERNAL_ERROR Both machines had "fips-mode-setup --enable", so I turned that off and rebooted both of them, and the join operation completed successfully. Started samba-ad-dc on the new DC and it ran, albeit with a number of TSIG verify failure errors and an exit code of 26, but that's a completely different issue I can work on. So it looks like, at least with that setup, trying the join with FIPS mode enabled fails.