-What's new in Samba 4 alpha1
+What's new in Samba 4 alpha5
============================
Samba 4 is the ambitious next version of the Samba suite that is being
this branch is support for the Active Directory logon protocols used
by Windows 2000 and above.
-Samba 4 is currently not yet in a state where it is usable in
-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 alpha5 follows on from the alpha release series we have been
+publishing since September 2007
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 alpha5 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, and it is
+in this role where it has seen deployment into production.
+
+Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an
+automated basis, 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, because there may be the features on
+which you may rely that are not present, or the mapping of
+your configuration and user database may not be complete.
+
+If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba4, 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 Alpha4
+=====================
-In the time since TP5 was released in June 2007, Samba has
+In the time since Samba4 Alpha4 was released in June 2008, 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
+ LDAP backend support restored (issues preventing the use of the LDAP
+ backend in alpha4 have been addressed).
+
+ SMB2 Support: The SMB2 server, while still disabled, has improved,
+ and now supports SMB2 signing.
- MMC Support: The Active Directory Users and Computers console now
- works, supporting most operations.
+ OpenChange support: Updates have been made since alpha4 to better
+ support OpenChange's use of Samba4's libraries.
- Winbind: Kai Blin has been working hard on his Google Summer of
- Code project, creating a winbind implementation for Samba4.
+ Faster ldb loading: A fix to avoid calling 'init_module' (which was
+ not defined by Samba modules, but was by the C library) will fix
+ some of the slowness in authentication.
- Heimdal update: A Heimdal 1.0 snapshot is now included as the
- internal Kerberos library in Samba4.
+ SWAT Remains Disabled: Due to a lack of developer time and without a
+ long-term web developer to maintain it, the SWAT web UI remains been
+ disabled (and would need to be rewritten in python in any case).
+
+ GNU Make: To try and simplfy our build system, we rely on GNU Make
+ to avoid autogenerating a massive single makefile.
- In the past few weeks, many small but significant bugs have been
- fixed, particularly thanks to Matthias Dieter Wallnöfer <mwallnoefer@yahoo.de>
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).
-
-- Renaming and deleting subtrees (containers) in the the LDB tree will
- have unexpected results.
+- There is no NetBIOS browsing support in the current release
- 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. (The NTP work in the previous alpha is partly to assist
+ with this problem).
+
+- Samba4 alpha5 is currently only portable to recent Linux
+ distributions. Work to return support for other Unix varients is
+ expected during the next alpha cycle
+
+- Samba4 alpha5 is incompatible with GnuTLS 2.0, found in Fedora 9 and
+ recent Ubuntu releases. GnuTLS use may be disabled using the
+ --disable-gnutls argument to ./configure. (otherwise 'make test' and
+ LDAPS operations will hang).
+
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 / kai / samba.git / blobdiff