Release Announcements
=====================

This is the first preview release of Samba 4.8.  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 4.8 will be the next version of the Samba suite.


UPGRADING
=========


NEW FEATURES/CHANGES
====================

KDC GPO application
-------------------

Adds Group Policy support for the samba kdc. Applies password policies
(minimum/maximum password age, minimum password length, and password
complexity) and kerberos policies (user/service ticket lifetime and
renew lifetime).

Adds the samba_gpoupdate script for applying and unapplying
policy. Can be applied automatically by setting

 'server services = +gpoupdate'.

smb.conf changes
================

  Parameter Name                     Description             Default
  --------------                     -----------             -------
  binddns dir			     New
  gpo update command		     New
  oplock contention limit            Removed
  prefork children		     New		     1


NT4-style replication based net commands removed
================================================

The following commands and sub-commands have been removed from the
"net" utility:

net rpc samdump
net rpc vampire ldif

Also, replicating from a real NT4 domain with "net rpc vampire" and
"net rpc vampire keytab" has been removed.

The NT4-based commands were accidentially broken in 2013, and nobody
noticed the breakage. So instead of fixing them including tests (which
would have meant writing a server for the protocols, which we don't
have) we decided to remove them.

For the same reason, the "samsync", "samdeltas" and "database_redo"
commands have been removed from rpcclient.

"net rpc vampire keytab" from Active Directory domains continues to be
supported.

vfs_aio_linux module removed
============================

The current Linux kernel aio does not match what Samba would
do. Shipping code that uses it leads people to false
assumptions. Samba implements async I/O based on threads by default,
there is no special module required to see benefits of read and write
request being sent do the disk in parallel.

smbclient reparse point symlink parameters reversed
===================================================

A bug in smbclient caused the 'symlink' command to reverse the
meaning of the new name and link target parameters when creating a
reparse point symlink against a Windows server. As this is a
little used feature the ordering of these parameters has been
reversed to match the parameter ordering of the UNIX extensions
'symlink' command. The usage message for this command has also
been improved to remove confusion.

REMOVED FEATURES
================

The two commands "net serverid list" and "net serverid wipe" have been
removed, because the file serverid.tdb is not used anymore.

"net serverid list" can be replaced by listing all files in the
subdirectory "msg.lock" of Samba's "lock directory". The unique id
listed by "net serverid list" is stored in every process' lockfile in
"msg.lock".

"net serverid wipe" is not necessary anymore. It was meant primarily
for clustered environments, where the serverid.tdb file was not
properly cleaned up after single node crashes. Nowadays smbd and
winbind take care of cleaning up the msg.lock and msg.sock directories
automatically.

KNOWN ISSUES
============

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Release_Planning_for_Samba_4.8#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
======================================================================