-What's new in Samba 4 alpha1
+What's new in Samba 4 alpha3
============================
Samba 4 is the ambitious next version of the Samba suite that is being
production environments. Note the WARNINGS below, and the STATUS file,
which aims to document what should and should not work.
-Samba4 alpha1 is the culmination of 4.5 years of development under our
-belt since Tridge first proposed a new Virtual File System (VFS) layer
-for Samba3 (a project which eventually lead to our Active Directory
-efforts), and 1.5 years since we first released a Technology Preview,
-we wish to allow users, managers and developers to see how we have
-progressed, and to invite feedback and support.
+Samba4 alpha3 follows on from our second alpha release (made in
+December), the first alpha release (made in September), and the
+Technology Preview series we have offered for some time now.
WARNINGS
========
-Samba4 alpha1 is not a final Samba release. That is more a reference
+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
VFS is backed with an extensive automated test suite.
A new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing
-JavaScript programs to interface to Samba's internals.
+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
We are aiming for Samba 4 to be powerful frontend to large
directories.
-CHANGES SINCE TP5
-=================
+CHANGES SINCE Alpha2
+=====================
-In the time since Sama4 Alpha1 was released in September 2007, Samba has
+In the time since Samba4 Alpha2 was released in December 2007, Samba has
continued to evolve, but you may particularly notice these areas:
- MMC Support: The Active Directory Users and Computers console now
- handles group membership correctly.
+ Python Bindings: Bindings for Python are now in place, and used for
+ Samba's provision script, slowly displacing EJS as the embedded
+ scripting language. With its increased use, Python is no longer
+ optional, and configure will generate an error if it cannot locate
+ an appropriate Python installation.
- member/memberOf: These and other linked attributes are now kept in
- sync
+ 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.
- subtree renames: Renaming a subtree of LDAP objects is now possible,
- with all linked attributes being kept consistant.
+ Oplock support: Samba4's file server now supports oplocks
- Python Bindings: Bindings for a future move to python as the
- internal scripting language have been created.
+ GNU Make: To try and simplfy our build system, we rely on GNU Make
+ to avoid autogenerating a massive single makefile.
- Shared library use: In support of projects such as OpenChange,
- which depend on Samba4, more of Samba4 is built as shared libraries.
+ Account Expiry: Samba4 now better handles installations over 30 days
+ old (thanks to our long-suffering testers for keeping installations
+ around that long!)
+
+ Registry: Samba4 registry interoperability has been improved in
+ both the client utilities and in the registry service exposed by
+ the Samba4 server itself.
+
+ Administrative Tools: Many enhancements have been made that allow
+ better integration with Windows administrative tools, especially
+ Active Directory Users and Computers.
+
+ ID mapping: Samba4 now handles ID mapping via winbind. The mappings
+ are stored in a central ldb that could be shared across multiple
+ machines using LDAP. Internal callers access this interface via a new
+ wbclient library.
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.
+months. More details can be found in our GIT history.
CHANGES
actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client
and server.
+
RUNNING Samba4
==============