What's new in Samba 4 alpha9 ============================ 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. Samba4 alpha9 follows on from the alpha release series we have been publishing since September 2007 WARNINGS ======== Samba4 alpha9 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. For example, while Samba 3.0 is an excellent member of a Active Directory domain, Samba4 is happier as a domain controller, and it is in this role where it has seen deployment into production. Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an automated basis, 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, because there may be the features on which you may rely that are not present, or the mapping of your configuration and user database may not be complete. If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba4, 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. Our Domain Controller (DC) implementation includes our own built-in LDAP server and Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) as well as the Samba3-like logon services provided over CIFS. We correctly generate 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. A new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing Python programs to interface to Samba's internals. 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 alpha8 ===================== In the time since Samba4 alpha7 was released in Feburary 2009, Samba has continued to evolve, but you may particularly notice these areas (in no particular order): Samba4 now includes the full set of user interface strings (display Specifiers) required to have the Microsoft Management Console operate LDB (the core Samba4 database library) has again been reworked for better performance Replication between Samba4 and Active Directory domains using the native replication protocol (DRS) has been demonstrated. Access Control Lists (in nTSecurityDescriptor) are now set correctly on objects in the directory, based on the same rules as Windows 2008. (Searches and modifications still use a simplistic administrator/not administrator criteria) These are just some of the user-visible highlights of the work done in the past few months. More details of the work done 'under the hood' can be found in our GIT history. CHANGES ======= Those familiar with Samba 3 can find a list of user-visible changes since that release series in the NEWS file. KNOWN ISSUES ============ - Domain member support is in it's infancy, and is not comparable to the support found in Samba3. - There is no printing support in the current release. - There is no NetBIOS browsing support in the current release - The Samba4 port of the CTDB clustering support is not yet complete - Clock Synchronisation is critical. Many 'wrong password' errors are actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client and server. (The NTP work in the previous alphas are partly to assist with this problem). - The DRS replication code often fails, and is very new - Users upgrading existing databases to Samba4 should carefully consult upgrading-samba4.txt. We have made a number of changes in this release that should make it easier to upgrade in future. RUNNING Samba4 ============== A short guide to setting up Samba 4 can be found in the howto.txt file in root of the tarball. 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. 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).