-What's new in Samba4 Technology Preview
-=======================================
+'Samba4 TP5' presents you with a snapshot into Samba4's ongoing
+development, as we move towards our first alpha releases. This Technology
+Preview (TP) is snapshot of Samba4's development, as at June 2007.
+
+In the time since TP4 was released in January 2007, Samba has
+continued to evolve, but you may particularly notice these areas:
+
+ Work has continued on SWAT, the the libnet API behind it. These we
+ hope will grow into a full web-based management solution for both
+ local and remote Samba and windows servers.
+
+ The DRSUAPI research effort has largely concluded, and an initial
+ implementation of AD replication is present, included in torture
+ test-cases. This includes the decryption of the AD passwords, which
+ were specially and separately encrypted. This should be recognised
+ as vital milestone.
+
+ Likewise, the LDAP Backend project has moved from a research
+ implementation into something that can be easily deployed outside
+ the test infrastructure.
+
+ Testing has been an area of great work, with renewed vigour to
+ increase our test coverage over the past few months. In doing so,
+ we now demonstrate PKINIT and many other aspects of kerberos, as
+ well as command-line authentication handling in our testsuite.
+
+ The testsuite infrastructure has been rewritten in perl and
+ extended, to setup multiple environments: allowing testing of the
+ domain member, as well as the domain controller, roles. Samba4's
+ initial implementation of winbind has been revived, to fill in these
+ tests.
+
+ In clustering, work on CTDB (an implementation of a clustered Samba)
+ has moved ahead very well, but the current code has not
+ been merged into Samba4 in time for this release.
+
+ To support better management, we have investigated group policy
+ support, and include the infrastructure required. Unfortunately
+ without MMC write support, you will need to place the polices into
+ the directory by hand.
+
+As we move forward, we have many of the features we feel are required
+for a Samba4 Alpha. Similarly, we know enough about the data
+formats (particularly those that are encrypted) to be confident that
+we won't need to change the LDB format. Our plan is to publish a
+Samba4 alpha in the next few months.
+
+These are just some of the highlights of the work done in the past few
+months. More details can be found in our SVN history.
-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 AD 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.
-
-With 3 years of development under our belt since tridge firs proposed
-a new VFS layer for Samba3 (a project which eventually lead to our AD
-efforts), it was felt that we should create something we could 'show
-off' to our users. This is a Technology Preview (TP), aimed at allowing
-users, managers and developers to see how we have progressed, and to
-invite feedback and support.
-
-WARNINGS
-========
-
-Samba4 TP is currently a pre-alpha technology. It may eat your cat, but
-is far more likely to choose to munch on your password database. In
-particular if you are upgrading from Samba3, you should backup all
-configuration and data.
-
-We expect that format changes will require that the user database be
-rebuilt from scratch a number of times before we make a final release,
-loosing password data.
-
-Samba4 TP includes basic ACL protection on the main user database, but
-due to time constraints, none on the registry at this stage. We do
-not currently have ACLs on the SWAT web-based management tool.
-
-Filesystem access should occour as the logged in user, much as Samba3
-does.
-
-We strongly recommend against use in a production environment at this
-stage.
-
-NEW FEATURES
-============
-
-Samba4 supports the server-side of the AD logon environment
-used by Windows 2000 and later, as evidenced by domain join
-and domain logon operations.
-
-Our Domain Controller (DC) implementation includes our own built-in
-LDAP server, KDC as well as the logon services provided over CIFS. We
-correctly generate the Kerberos PAC, and include it with the kerberos
-tickets we issue.
-
-SWAT is the new user-freindly interface to Samba4 managment, and
-provides access to our setup and migration functionality. In
-particular, we can migrate windows domains in Samba4 from this
-interface. This allows setup of initial user databases, and upgrades
-from Samba3.
-
-The new NTFVS features in Samba4, the project that started this all,
-is concerned with providing 'exact' semantics for basic file
-operations, and is backed by an extensive client testsuite.
-
-A new scripting interface has been added to Samba4, allowing
-JavaScript programs to interface to Samba's internals. This is also
-used for the SWAT GUI.
-
-Samba4 is strongly based around an LDAP-like backend, which includes
-an implementation against the actual LDAP protocol. With the addition
-of modules on directory servers and in Samba, we hope this can allow
-Samba4 to be a powerful frontend to vendor directories, much as Samba3
-is.
-
-CHANGES
-=======
-
-Those familiar with Samba 3 can find a list of user-visible changes
-since that release series in the NEWS file.
-
-In particular, standalone server and domain member roles are not
-currently supported. While we have much of the infrustructure
-required, we have not collected these peices togeather.
-
-There is no printing support in the current release.
-
-KNOWN ISSUES
-============
-
-- SWAT can be painful with <TAB> and forms. Just use the mouse, as
- the JS layer doing this will change.
-
-- Domain logons (using Kerberos) from windows clients incorrectly
- state that the password expires today.
-
-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/. Please
-look at the STATUS file before filing a bug to see if a particular
-is supposed to work yet.
-
-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).
git.samba.org / samba.git / blobdiff