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What's new in Samba 4 alpha7
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============================
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Samba 4 is the ambitious next version of the Samba suite that is being
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developed in parallel to the stable 3.0 series. The main emphasis in
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this branch is support for the Active Directory logon protocols used
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by Windows 2000 and above.
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Samba4 alpha7 follows on from the alpha release series we have been
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publishing since September 2007
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Samba4 alpha7 is not a final Samba release. That is more a reference
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to Samba4's lack of the features we expect you will need than a
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statement of code quality, but clearly it hasn't seen a broad
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deployment yet. If you were to upgrade Samba3 (or indeed Windows) to
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Samba4, you would find many things work, but that other key features
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you may have relied on simply are not there yet.
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For example, while Samba 3.0 is an excellent member of a Active
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Directory domain, Samba4 is happier as a domain controller, and it is
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in this role where it has seen deployment into production.
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Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an
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automated basis, we have found Samba4 to be very stable in it's
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behaviour. We have to recommend against upgrading production servers
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from Samba 3 to Samba 4 at this stage, because there may be the features on
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which you may rely that are not present, or the mapping of
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your configuration and user database may not be complete.
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If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba4, you should
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backup all configuration and data.
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Samba4 supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon environment
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used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain join
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and domain logon operations with these clients.
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Our Domain Controller (DC) implementation includes our own built-in
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LDAP server and Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) as well as the
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Samba3-like logon services provided over CIFS. We correctly generate
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the infamous Kerberos PAC, and include it with the Kerberos tickets we
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The new VFS features in Samba 4 adapts the filesystem on the server to
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match the Windows client semantics, allowing Samba 4 to better match
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windows behaviour and application expectations. This includes file
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annotation information (in streams) and NT ACLs in particular. The
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VFS is backed with an extensive automated test suite.
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A new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing
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Python programs to interface to Samba's internals.
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The Samba 4 architecture is based around an LDAP-like database that
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can use a range of modular backends. One of the backends supports
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standards compliant LDAP servers (including OpenLDAP), and we are
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working on modules to map between AD-like behaviours and this backend.
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We are aiming for Samba 4 to be powerful frontend to large
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In the time since Samba4 alpha6 was released in Janurary 2009, Samba has
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continued to evolve, but you may particularly notice these areas
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(in no particular order):
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Multi Master Replication (MMR) configuration can now be generated
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for the OpenLDAP-Backend.
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OpenLDAP-Online-Configuration (olc) can now be generated for the
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OpenLDAP-Backend. (OpenLDAP-Versions >=2.4.15 required).
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Support for Windows 7 beta as a member of the Samba4 domain
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Issues with the nesting of LDB transactions have been fixed
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A number of internal libraries (tevent, auth in particular has been
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updated for easier use outside Samba4
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spoolss IDL updates to bring Samba3 to use PIDL code, and to merge
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the corrected IDL back into Samba4
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Fixes to allow use of C++ compilers and to increase portability
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Fixed TLS (SSL) support with modern versions of GnuTLS
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These are just some of the highlights of the work done in the past
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month. More details can be found in our GIT history.
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Those familiar with Samba 3 can find a list of user-visible changes
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since that release series in the NEWS file.
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- Domain member support is in it's infancy, and is not comparable to
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the support found in Samba3.
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- There is no printing support in the current release.
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- There is no NetBIOS browsing support in the current release
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- The Samba4 port of the CTDB clustering support is not yet complete
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- Clock Synchronisation is critical. Many 'wrong password' errors are
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actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client
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and server. (The NTP work in the previous alphas are partly to assist
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- Samba4 alpha7 is currently only portable to recent Linux
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distributions. Work to return support for other Unix varients is
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expected during the next alpha cycles
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A short guide to setting up Samba 4 can be found in the howto.txt file
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in root of the tarball.
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DEVELOPMENT and FEEDBACK
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========================
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Bugs can be filed at https://bugzilla.samba.org/ but please be aware
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that many features are simply not expected to work at this stage.
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The Samba Wiki at http://wiki.samba.org should detail some of these
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Development and general discussion about Samba 4 happens mainly on
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the #samba-technical IRC channel (on irc.freenode.net) and
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the samba-technical mailing list (see http://lists.samba.org/ for