-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. 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 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
+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 Alpha2
+=====================
-In the time since TP5 was released in June 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:
- Group Policy Support: Basic group policies may be defined, and are
- enforced by Windows clients
+ 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.
+
+ 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.
- MMC Support: The Active Directory Users and Computers console now
- works, supporting most operations.
+ Oplock support: Samba4's file server now supports oplocks
- Winbind: Kai Blin has been working hard on his Google Summer of
- Code project, creating a winbind implementation for Samba4.
+ GNU Make: To try and simplfy our build system, we rely on GNU Make
+ to avoid autogenerating a massive single makefile.
- Heimdal update: A Heimdal 1.0 snapshot is now included as the
- internal Kerberos library in Samba4.
+ Account Expiry: Samba4 now better handles installations over 30 days
+ old (thanks to our long-suffering testers for keeping installations
+ around that long!)
- In the past few weeks, many small but significant bugs have been
- fixed, particularly thanks to Matthias Dieter Wallnöfer <mwallnoefer@yahoo.de>
+ 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.
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
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).
+- The Samba4 port of the CTDB clustering support is not yet complete
-- Renaming and deleting subtrees (containers) in the the LDB tree will
- have unexpected results.
+- Clock Synchronisation is critical. Many 'wrong password' errors are
+ actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client
+ and server.
-- The Samba4 port of the CTDB clustering support is not yet complete
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 / jelmer / samba4-debian.git / blobdiff