-What's new in Samba 4 alpha5
-============================
+What's new in Samba 4.0 beta5
+=============================
-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 4.0 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.
-Samba4 alpha5 follows on from the alpha release series we have been
-publishing since September 2007
WARNINGS
========
-Samba4 alpha5 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.
+Samba 4.0 beta5 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 the best of all of Samba's
+technology parts, both a file server (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, and it is
-in this role where it has seen deployment into production.
+Samba 4.0 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 beta at this stage.
-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.
+In particular note that the new default configuration 's3fs' may have
+different stability characteristics compared with our previous default
+file server. We are making this release so that we can find and fix
+any of these issues that arise in the real world. New AD DC
+installations can provision or join with --use-ntvfs to obtain the
+previous default file server. See below how to continue using ntvfs
+in an existing installation.
+
+If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba 4.0
+beta releases, you should backup all configuration and data.
+
+
+UPGRADING
+=========
+
+Users upgrading from Samba 3.x domain controllers and wanting to use
+Samba 4.0 as an AD DC should use the 'samba-tool domain
+classicupgrade' command. See the wiki for more details:
+https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/samba3upgrade/HOWTO
+
+Users upgrading from Samba 4.0 alpha and beta releases since alpha15
+should run 'samba-tool dbcheck --cross-ncs --fix'. Users upgrading
+from earlier alpha releases should contact the team for advice.
-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.
+Samba 4.0 beta 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 beta ships with two distinct file servers. We now use the
+file server from the Samba 3.x series 'smbd' for all file serving by
+default. For pure file server work, the binaries users would expect
+from that series (nmbd, winbindd, smbpasswd) continue to be available.
+
+Samba 4.0 also ships with the 'NTVFS' file server. This file server
+is what was used in all previous alpha releases of Samba 4.0, and is
+tuned to match the requirements of an AD domain controller. We
+continue to support this, not only to provide continuity to
+installations that have deployed it as part of an AD DC, but also as a
+running example of the NT-FSA architecture we expect to move smbd to in
+the longer term.
-A new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing
-Python programs to interface to Samba's internals.
+As mentioned above, this change to the default file server may cause
+instability, as we learn about the real-world interactions between
+these two key components.
-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.
+As DNS is an integral part of Active Directory, we also provide a DNS
+solution, using the BIND DLZ mechanism in versions 9.8 and 9.9.
+During the provision, a configuration file will be generated for bind
+to make it use this plugin. We also have a project to provide a
+minimal internal DNS server from within the Samba process, for easier
+'out of the box' configuration. Note however that this is not yet
+complete (pending addition of secure DNS update support).
-CHANGES SINCE Alpha4
+To provide accurate timestamps to Windows clients, we integrate with
+the NTP project to provide secured NTP replies.
+
+Finally, 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.
+
+
+CHANGES SINCE beta4
=====================
-In the time since Samba4 Alpha4 was released in June 2008, Samba has
-continued to evolve, but you may particularly notice these areas:
+For a list of changes since beta4, please see the git log.
+
+$ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git
+$ cd samba.git
+$ git log samba-4.0.0beta4..samba-4.0.0beta5
+
+Some major user-visible changes include:
- LDAP backend support restored (issues preventing the use of the LDAP
- backend in alpha4 have been addressed)
+- The issue with beta4 being unable to build with a released version of
+ ldb has been resolved.
- SMB2 Support: The SMB2 server, while still disabled, has improved,
- and now supports SMB2 signing.
+- The two parameter tables for our two smb.conf parsing engines have
+ been merged. This removes the ugly (but harmless) "unknown
+ parameter xxx" warnings, particularly from the smbd child process.
- OpenChange support: Updates have been made since alpha4 to better
- support OpenChange's use of Samba4's libraries.
+- Major issues have been fixed in conflict and missing/deleted parent
+ handling in or DRS replication engine.
- Faster ldb loading: A fix to avoid calling 'init_module' (which was
- not defined by Samba modules, but was by the C library) will fix
- some of the slowness in authentication.
+- Safety improvements to prevent corruption of read-write replicas
+ by manual replication from a read-only replica.
- SWAT Remains Disabled: Due to a lack of developer time and without a
- long-term web developer to maintain it, the SWAT web UI remains been
- disabled (and would need to be rewritten in python in any case).
+- Improvements to dbcheck to correct incorrect instanceType values from
+ the above and to relocate objects with missing parents.
- GNU Make: To try and simplfy our build system, we rely on GNU Make
- to avoid autogenerating a massive single makefile.
+- smbd no longer places all accounts in the 'Domain Users' of the AD
+ domain to which it is joined
+- AES support in NETLOGON Schannel
-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.
+- DCE/RPC timeout handling no longer crashes
+- "socket address" is now "nbt client socket address" as it only
+ controls the binding of the NetBIOS client, not other protocols.
+ See 'bind interfaces only = yes'. This parameter is also now depricated.
-CHANGES
-=======
+- nmbd now always binds to it's broadcast sockets explicitly, rather
+ than just relying on the socket address above.
-Those familiar with Samba 3 can find a list of user-visible changes
-since that release series in the NEWS file.
+Less visible, but important changes under the hood include:
+
+- Continued work to support SMB2 and SMB3
+
+- Continued work to use async IO to improve file server performance.
+
+- Patches to ensure that talloc_tos() and talloc_stackframe() are
+ always used correctly.
KNOWN ISSUES
============
-- Domain member support is in it's infancy, and is not comparable to
- the support found in Samba3.
+- This release makes the s3fs file server the default, as this is the
+ file server combination we will use for the Samba 4.0 release.
+
+- Modifying of group policies by members of the Domain Administrators
+ group is not possible with the s3fs file server, only with the ntvfs
+ file server. This is due to the underlying POSIX ACL not being set
+ at provision time.
+
+- For similar reasons, sites with ACLs stored by the ntvfs file server
+ may wish to continue to use that file server implementation, as a
+ posix ACL will similarly not be set in this case.
+
+- Replication of DNS data from one AD server to another may not work.
+ The DNS data used by the internal DNS server and bind9_dlz is stored
+ in an application partition in our directory. The replication of
+ this partition is not yet reliable.
-- There is no printing support in the current release.
+- Replication may fail on FreeBSD due to getaddrinfo() rejecting names
+ containing _. A workaround will be in the next beta.
-- There is no netbios browsing support in the current release
+- upgradeprovision should not be run when upgrading to this release
+ from a recent release. No important database format changes have
+ been made since alpha16.
-- The Samba4 port of the CTDB clustering support is not yet complete
+- Installation on systems without a system iconv (and developer
+ headers at compile time) is known to cause errors when dealing with
+ non-ASCII characters.
+
+- 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 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. (The NTP work in the previous alpha is partly to assist
+ and server. (The NTP work in the previous alphas are partly to assist
with this problem).
-- Samba4 alpha5 is currently only portable to recent Linux
- distributions. Work to return support for other Unix varients is
- expected during the next alpha cycle
+- 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:
-- Samba4 alpha5 is incompatible with GnuTLS 2.0, found in Fedora 9 and
- recent Ubuntu releases. GnuTLS use may be disabled using the
- --disable-gnutls argument to ./configure. (otherwise 'make test' and
- LDAPS operations will hang).
+ 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
+======================================================================
git.samba.org / samba.git / blobdiff