-What's new in Samba 4 alpha1
+What's new in Samba 4 alpha2
============================
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 alpha2 follows on from our 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. We recommend against
-upgrading any production servers from Samba 3 to Samba 4 at this
-stage. If you are upgrading an experimental server, you should backup
-all configuration and data.
+Samba4 alpha2 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.
+
+For example, while Samba 3.0 is an excellent member of a Active
+Directory domain, Samba4 is happier as a domain controller: (This is
+where we have done most of the research and development).
+
+While Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an
+automated basis, and 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. If you are upgrading an
+experimental server, or looking to develop and test Samba, you should
+backup all configuration and data.
NEW FEATURES
============
the infamous Kerberos PAC, and include it with the Kerberos tickets we
issue.
-SWAT is now integrated into Samba 4 as the user-friendly interface to
-Samba server management. SWAT provides easy provides access to our
-setup and migration tools. Using SWAT, you can migrate windows
-domains in Samba 4, allowing easy setup of initial user databases.
-
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
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 Alpha 1
+=====================
-In the time since TP5 was released in June 2007, Samba has
+In the time since Samba4 Alpha1 was released in September 2007, Samba has
continued to evolve, but you may particularly notice these areas:
- Group Policy Support: Basic group policies may be defined, and are
- enforced by Windows clients
-
MMC Support: The Active Directory Users and Computers console now
- works, supporting most operations.
+ handles group membership correctly.
+
+ member/memberOf: These and other linked attributes are now kept in
+ sync
- Winbind: Kai Blin has been working hard on his Google Summer of
- Code project, creating a winbind implementation for Samba4.
+ subtree renames: Renaming a subtree of LDAP objects is now possible,
+ with all linked attributes being kept consistant.
- Heimdal update: A Heimdal 1.0 snapshot is now included as the
- internal Kerberos library in Samba4.
+ Python Bindings: Bindings for a future move to Python as the
+ internal scripting language have been created.
- In the past few weeks, many small but significant bugs have been
- fixed, particularly thanks to Matthias Dieter Wallnöfer <mwallnoefer@yahoo.de>
+ Shared library use: In support of projects such as OpenChange,
+ which depend on Samba4, more of Samba4 is built as shared libraries.
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.
KNOWN ISSUES
============
-- Domain member support is in it's infancy, and is not comprable to
+- Domain member support is in it's infancy, and is not comparable to
the support found in Samba3.
- There is no printing support in the current release.
-- Support for managing groups is currently poor (as the
- memberOf/member linked attributes are not kept in sync).
-
-- Renaming and deleting subtrees (containers) in the the LDB tree will
- have unexpected results.
-
- The Samba4 port of the CTDB clustering support is not yet complete
+- Clock Synchronisation is critical. Many 'wrong password' errors are
+ actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client
+ and server.
+
RUNNING Samba4
==============
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.
+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.
+
+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
git.samba.org / ira / wip.git / blobdiff