-What's new in Samba 4 alpha3
-============================
+What's new in Samba 4 alpha18
+=============================
-Samba 4 is the ambitious next version of the Samba suite that is being
-developed in parallel to the stable 3.0 series. The main emphasis in
-this branch is support for the Active Directory logon protocols used
-by Windows 2000 and above.
-
-Samba 4 is currently not yet in a state where it is usable in
-production environments. Note the WARNINGS below, and the STATUS file,
-which aims to document what should and should not work.
-
-Samba4 alpha3 follows on from our first alpha release, made in
-September, and the Technology Preview series we have offered for some
-time now.
+Samba 4.0 will be the next version of the Samba suite and incorporates
+all the technology found in both the Samba4 alpha series and the
+stable 3.x series. The primary additional features over Samba 3.6 are
+support for the Active Directory logon protocols used by Windows 2000
+and above.
WARNINGS
========
-Samba4 alpha3 is not a final Samba release. That is more a reference
-to Samba4's lack of the features we expect you will need than a
-statement of code quality, but clearly it hasn't seen a broad
-deployment yet. If you were to upgrade Samba3 (or indeed Windows) to
-Samba4, you would find many things work, but that other key features
-you may have relied on simply are not there yet.
+Samba4 alpha18 is not a final Samba release, however we are now making
+good progress towards a Samba 4.0 release, of which this is a preview.
+Be aware the this release contains both the technology of Samba 3.6
+(that you can reasonably expect to upgrade existing Samba 3.x releases
+to) and the AD domain controller work previously known as 'samba4'.
-For example, while Samba 3.0 is an excellent member of a Active
-Directory domain, Samba4 is happier as a domain controller: (This is
-where we have done most of the research and development).
+While binaries for the stable file server are provided in this
+release, for a stable, supported file server, Samba3 domain or AD
+domain member installation, please run a Samba 3.x release, as we are
+still bedding down the new single build system.
-While Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an
-automated basis, and we have found Samba4 to be very stable in it's
-behaviour, we have to recommend against upgrading production servers
-from Samba 3 to Samba 4 at this stage. If you are upgrading an
-experimental server, or looking to develop and test Samba, you should
-backup all configuration and data.
+Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an automated
+basis, we have found Samba 4.0 to be very stable in it's behavior.
+However, we still recommend against upgrading production servers from
+Samba 3.x release to Samba 4.0 alpha at this stage.
+
+If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba 4.0
+alpha releases, you should backup all configuration and data.
NEW FEATURES
============
-Samba4 supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon environment
-used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain join
-and domain logon operations with these clients.
+Samba 4.0 alpha supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon
+environment used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain
+join and domain logon operations with these clients.
Our Domain Controller (DC) implementation includes our own built-in
LDAP server and Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) as well as the
the infamous Kerberos PAC, and include it with the Kerberos tickets we
issue.
-The new VFS features in Samba 4 adapts the filesystem on the server to
-match the Windows client semantics, allowing Samba 4 to better match
-windows behaviour and application expectations. This includes file
-annotation information (in streams) and NT ACLs in particular. The
-VFS is backed with an extensive automated test suite.
+Samba 4.0 alpha ships with two distinct file servers. The file server
+from the Samba 3.x series is 'smbd', and works with the binaries users
+would expect from that series (nmbd, winbindd, smbpasswd).
+
+Samba 4.0 also ships with a new file server, which is tuned to match
+the requirements of an AD domain controller. Users should not use the
+file server in the 'samba' binary for non-DC related tasks.
-A new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing
-Python programs to interface to Samba's internals.
+A new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing Python
+programs to interface to Samba's internals, and many tools and
+internal workings of the DC code is now implemented in python.
-The Samba 4 architecture is based around an LDAP-like database that
-can use a range of modular backends. One of the backends supports
-standards compliant LDAP servers (including OpenLDAP), and we are
-working on modules to map between AD-like behaviours and this backend.
-We are aiming for Samba 4 to be powerful frontend to large
-directories.
-CHANGES SINCE Alpha2
+CHANGES SINCE alpha17
=====================
-In the time since Samba4 Alpha2 was released in December 2007, Samba has
-continued to evolve, but you may particularly notice these areas:
+For a list of changes since alpha 17, please see the git log.
+
+$ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git
+$ cd samba.git
+$ git log samba-4.0.0alpha17..samba-4.0.0alpha18
+
+Some major user-visible changes include:
+
+Improvements to DNS servers. Samba4 now has 3 options for the
+handling of DNS: The default option is to use the BIND 9.8 DLZ plugin,
+which stores the information about the DNS zone in the directory.
+There is also an internal DNS server (but which does not support
+secure DNS updates at this time) and the flat file BIND 9.8 backend
+(storing the data in traditional zone files).
+
+To migrate from zone files to directory based DNS servers, a migration
+tool (upgradedns) has been added.
- Python Bindings: Bindings for Python are now in place, and used for
- Samba's provision script, slowly displacing EJS as the embedded
- scripting language
+samba-tool dns commands to manage DNS records stored in directory.
- SWAT Disabled: Due to a lack of developer time and without a
- long-term web developer to maintain it, the SWAT web UI has been
- disabled.
+smbwrapper (a user-space file system based on LD_PRELOAD) has been
+removed.
- Oplock support: Samba4's file server now supports oplocks
+Improvement to the upgrade process between Samba 3.x domains and Samba
+4.0 AD domains (samba-tool domain samba3upgrade).
- GNU Make: To try and simplfy our build system, we rely on GNU Make
- to avoid autogenerating a massive single makefile.
+Some major but less visible changes include:
- Account Expiry: Samba4 now better handles installations over 30 days
- old (thanks to our long-suffering testers for keeping installations
- around that long!)
+Major work to bridge the code gap between the major parts of the code
+base, including a common loadparm wrapper, smb client library, as well
+as NTLMSSP, GSSAPI and SPNEGO code as part of the GENSEC
+authentication and authorization stack.
-These are just some of the highlights of the work done in the past few
-months. More details can be found in our GIT history.
+Preparation work for moving to TDB2, a new version of Samba's core TDB
+database.
+smbtorture tests for SMB 2 and SMB 2.2 as the team improves and
+develops support these new protocols.
-CHANGES
-=======
+Major cleanup and removal of global variables in the smbd SMB and SMB2 server.
-Those familiar with Samba 3 can find a list of user-visible changes
-since that release series in the NEWS file.
+Heimdal security issue 2012-01-11 - libkrb5 checksum - denial of serice
+http://www.h5l.org//advisories.html?show=2012-01-11
KNOWN ISSUES
============
-- Domain member support is in it's infancy, and is not comparable to
- the support found in Samba3.
+- upgradeprovision should not be run when upgrading to this release
+ from a recent release. No important database format changes have
+ been made since alpha16.
-- There is no printing support in the current release.
+- The BIND 9 DLZ plugin is compatible only with BIND 9.8, not BIND 9.9.
-- The Samba4 port of the CTDB clustering support is not yet complete
+- Systems with tdb or ldb installed as a system library may have
+ difficulty building this release of Samba4. The --disable-tdb2
+ configure switch may be of assistance. (Distributors who (rightly)
+ have difficulty with this may wish to wait until a future release,
+ which will soon fix this issue).
+
+- Installation on systems without a system iconv (and developer
+ headers at compile time) is known to cause errors when dealing with
+ non-ASCII characters.
+
+- In some situations, group members may not be upgraded by the
+ samba-tool domain samba3upgrade tool
+
+- Domain member support in the 'samba' binary is in it's infancy, and
+ is not comparable to the support found in winbindd. As such, do not
+ use the 'samba' binary (provided for the AD server) on a member
+ server.
+
+- There is no printing support in the 'samba' binary (use smbd instead)
+
+- There is no NetBIOS browsing support (network neighbourhood) in the
+ 'samba' binary (use nmbd and smbd instead)
- Clock Synchronisation is critical. Many 'wrong password' errors are
actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client
- and server.
+ and server. (The NTP work in the previous alphas are partly to assist
+ with this problem).
+
+- The DRS replication code may fail. Please contact the team if you
+ experience issues with DRS replication, as we have fixed many issues
+ here in response to feedback from our production users.
+
+RUNNING Samba 4.0 as an AD DC
+=============================
+
+A short guide to setting up Samba 4 as an AD DC can be found on the wiki:
+ http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/HOWTO
-RUNNING Samba4
-==============
+#######################################
+Reporting bugs & Development Discussion
+#######################################
-A short guide to setting up Samba 4 can be found in the howto.txt file
-in root of the tarball.
+Please discuss this release on the samba-technical mailing list or by
+joining the #samba-technical IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.
-DEVELOPMENT and FEEDBACK
-========================
-Bugs can be filed at https://bugzilla.samba.org/ but please be aware
-that many features are simply not expected to work at this stage.
+If you do report problems then please try to send high quality
+feedback. If you don't provide vital information to help us track down
+the problem then you will probably be ignored. All bug reports should
+be filed under the Samba 4.0 product in the project's Bugzilla
+database (https://bugzilla.samba.org/).
-The Samba Wiki at http://wiki.samba.org should detail some of these
-development plans.
-Development and general discussion about Samba 4 happens mainly on
-the #samba-technical IRC channel (on irc.freenode.net) and
-the samba-technical mailing list (see http://lists.samba.org/ for
-details).
+======================================================================
+== Our Code, Our Bugs, Our Responsibility.
+== The Samba Team
+======================================================================