Release Announcements ===================== This is the first preview release of Samba 4.12. This is *not* intended for production environments and is designed for testing purposes only. Please report any defects via the Samba bug reporting system at https://bugzilla.samba.org/. Samba 4.12 will be the next version of the Samba suite. UPGRADING ========= NEW FEATURES/CHANGES ==================== Python 3.5 Required ------------------- Samba's minimum runtime requirement for python was raised to Python 3.4 with samba 4.11. Samba 4.12 raises this minimum version to Python 3.5 both to access new features and because this is the oldest version we test with in our CI infrastructure. (Build time support for the file server with Python 2.6 has not changed) Removing in-tree cryptography: GnuTLS 3.4.7 required ---------------------------------------------------- Samba is making efforts to remove in-tree cryptographic functionality, and to instead rely on externally maintained libraries. To this end, Samba has chosen GnuTLS as our standard cryptographic provider. Samba now requires GnuTLS 3.4.7 to be installed (including development headers at build time) for all configurations, not just the Samba AD DC. Thanks to this work Samba no longer ships an in-tree DES implementation and on GnuTLS 3.6.5 or later Samba will include no in-tree cryptography other than the MD4 hash and that implemented in our copy of Heimdal. Using GnuTLS for SMB3 encryption you will notice huge performance and copy speed improvements. Tests with the CIFS Kernel client from Linux Kernel 5.3 show a 3x speed improvement for writing and a 2.5x speed improvement for reads! NOTE WELL: The use of GnuTLS means that Samba will honour the system-wide 'FIPS mode' (a reference to the US FIPS-140 cryptographic standard) and so will not operate in many still common situations if this system-wide parameter is in effect, as many of our protocols rely on outdated cryptography. A future Samba version will mitigate this to some extent where good cryptography effectively wraps bad cryptography, but for now that above applies. "net ads kerberos pac save" and "net eventlog export" ----------------------------------------------------- The "net ads kerberos pac save" and "net eventlog export" tools will no longer silently overwrite an existing file during data export. If the filename given exits, an error will be shown. VFS === SMB_VFS_NTIMES -------------- Samba now uses a sentinel value based on utimensat(2) UTIME_OMIT to denote to-be-ignored timestamp variables passed to the SMB_VFS_NTIMES() VFS function. VFS modules can check whether any of the time values inside a struct smb_file_time is to be ignored by calling is_omit_timespec() on the value. REMOVED FEATURES ================ The smb.conf parameter "write cache size" has been removed. Since the in-memory write caching code was written, our write path has changed significantly. In particular we have gained very flexible support for async I/O, with the new linux io_uring interface in development. The old write cache concept which cached data in main memory followed by a blocking pwrite no longer gives any improvement on modern systems, and may make performance worse on memory-contrained systems, so this functionality should not be enabled in core smbd code. In addition, it complicated the write code, which is a performance critical code path. If required for specialist purposes, it can be recreated as a VFS module. BIND9_FLATFILE deprecated ------------------------- The BIND9_FLATFILE DNS backend is deprecated in this release and will be removed in the future. This was only practically useful on a single domain controller or under expert care and supervision. This release removes the "rndc command" smb.conf parameter, which supported this configuration by writing out a list of DCs permitted to make changes to the DNS Zone and nudging the 'named' server if a new DC was added to the domain. Administrators using BIND9_FLATFILE will need to maintain this manually from now on. Retiring DES encryption types in Kerberos. ------------------------------------------ With this release, support for DES encryption types has been removed from Samba, and setting DES_ONLY flag for an account will cause Kerberos authentication to fail for that account (see RFC-6649). Samba-DC: DES keys no longer saved in DB. ----------------------------------------- When a new password is set for an account, Samba DC will store random keys in DB instead of DES keys derived from the password. If the account is being migrated to Windbows or to an older version of Samba in order to use DES keys, the password must be reset to make it work. Heimdal-DC: removal of weak-crypto. ----------------------------------- Following removal of DES encryption types from Samba, the embedded Heimdal build has been updated to not compile weak crypto code (HEIM_WEAK_CRYPTO). smb.conf changes ================ Parameter Name Description Default -------------- ----------- ------- nfs4:acedup Changed default merge rndc command Removed write cache size Removed KNOWN ISSUES ============ https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Release_Planning_for_Samba_4.12#Release_blocking_bugs ####################################### Reporting bugs & Development Discussion ####################################### Please discuss this release on the samba-technical mailing list or by joining the #samba-technical IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. 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 4.1 and newer product in the project's Bugzilla database (https://bugzilla.samba.org/). ====================================================================== == Our Code, Our Bugs, Our Responsibility. == The Samba Team ======================================================================