What's new in Samba 4.0.0 rc1 ============================= Samba 4.0 will be the next version of the Samba suite and incorporates all the technology found in both the Samba4 alpha series and the stable 3.x series. The primary additional features over Samba 3.6 are support for the Active Directory logon protocols used by Windows 2000 and above. WARNINGS ======== Samba 4.0.0 rc1 is not a final Samba release, however we are now making good progress towards a Samba 4.0 release. This release contains the best of all of Samba's technology parts, both a file server (that you can reasonably expect to upgrade existing Samba 3.x releases to) and the AD domain controller work previously known as 'samba4'. Samba 4.0 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an automated basis, we have found Samba 4.0 to be very stable in its behaviour. However, as with all our pre-releases we still recommend against upgrading production servers from Samba 3.x release to Samba 4.0.0rc1 at this stage. If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba 4.0 releases candidates, you should backup all configuration and data. UPGRADING ========= Users upgrading from Samba 3.x domain controllers and wanting to use Samba 4.0 as an AD DC should use the 'samba-tool domain classicupgrade' command. See the wiki for more details: https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/samba3upgrade/HOWTO Users upgrading from Samba 4.0 alpha and beta releases since alpha15 should run 'samba-tool dbcheck --cross-ncs --fix' before re-starting Samba. Users upgrading from earlier alpha releases should contact the team for advice. Users upgrading an AD DC from any previous release should run 'samba-tool ntacl sysvolreset' to re-sync ACLs on the sysvol share with those matching the GPOs in LDAP and the defaults from an initial provision. This will set an underlying POSIX ACL if required (eg not using the NTVFS file server). If you used the BIND9_FLATFILE or BIND9_DLZ features, you'll have to add '-dns' to the 'server services' option, as the internal dns server (SAMBA_INTERNAL) is the default now. NEW FEATURES ============ Samba 4.0 supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon environment used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain join and domain logon operations with these clients. Our Domain Controller (DC) implementation includes our own built-in LDAP server and Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) as well as the Samba3-like logon services provided over CIFS. We correctly generate the infamous Kerberos PAC, and include it with the Kerberos tickets we issue. Samba 4.0.0rc1 ships with two distinct file servers. We now use the file server from the Samba 3.x series 'smbd' for all file serving by default. Samba 4.0 also ships with the 'NTVFS' file server. This file server is what was used in all previous alpha releases of Samba 4.0, and is tuned to match the requirements of an AD domain controller. We continue to support this, not only to provide continuity to installations that have deployed it as part of an AD DC, but also as a running example of the NT-FSA architecture we expect to move smbd to in the longer term. For pure file server work, the binaries users would expect from that series (nmbd, winbindd, smbpasswd) continue to be available. When running an AD DC, you only need to run 'samba' (not nmbd/smbd/winbind), as the required services are co-coordinated by this master binary. As DNS is an integral part of Active Directory, we also provide two DNS solutions, a simple internal DNS server for 'out of the box' configurations and a more elaborate BIND plugin using the BIND DLZ mechanism in versions 9.8 and 9.9. During the provision, you can select which backend to use. With the internal backend, your DNS server is good to go. If you chose the BIND_DLZ backend, a configuration file will be generated for bind to make it use this plugin, as well as a file explaining how to set up bind. To provide accurate timestamps to Windows clients, we integrate with the NTP project to provide secured NTP replies. To use you need to start ntpd and configure it with the 'restrict ... ms-sntp' and ntpsigndsocket options. Finally, a new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing Python programs to interface to Samba's internals, and many tools and internal workings of the DC code is now implemented in python. CHANGES SINCE beta8 =================== For a list of changes since beta8, please see the git log. $ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git $ cd samba.git $ git log samba-4.0.0beta8..samba-4.0.0rc1 Some major user-visible changes include: - The smbd file server now offers SMB3 as the maximum protocol by default. Samba can negotiate version 3 of the SMB protocol and supports the required features, including all required features of SMB 2.1 and SMB 2.0. Note that this does not imply that Samba implements all features of SMB3 since many of them are optional capabilities. Examples of features that Samba does not implement yet are leases (SMB 2.1) and multi-channel (SMB 3). Samba now offers an initial support for SMB2 durable file handles. These are enabled by default and can be turned off on a per share basis by setting "durable handles = no" on the share configuration. Note that in order to prevent conflicts with other applications accessing the same files, durable handles are only granted on shares that are configured for CIFS/SMB2-only access, i.e. more explicitly shares that are configured for minimal interoperability with these settings: kernel oplocks = no kernel share modes = no posix locking = no The option "kernel share modes" has been introduced to be able to turn the translation of SMB share modes into kernel flocks off. - The 'provision' script was merged into 'samba-tool' as 'samba-tool domain provision' the arguments are still the same. - The 'updateprovision' script was renamed to 'samba_upgradeprovision'. - We changed the default dns implementation to the internal dns server (SAMBA_INTERNAL). BIND9_FLATFILE and BIND9_DLZ are still available, but you'll have to add '-dns' to the 'server services' option to disable the internal dns server. The default for 'allow dns updates' has changed to 'secure only'. KNOWN ISSUES ============ - 'samba-tool domain classicupgrade' will fail when setting ACLs on the GPO folders with NT_STATUS_INVALID_ONWER in the default configuration. This happens if, as is typical a 'domain admins' group (-512) is mapped in the passdb backend being upgraded. This is because the group mapping to a GID only prevents Samba from allocating a uid for that group. The uid is needed so the 'domain admins' group can own the GPO file objects. To work around this issue, remove the 'domain admins' group before upgrade, as it will be re-created automatically. You will of course need to fill in the group membership again. A future release will make this automatic, or find some other workaround. - This release makes the s3fs file server the default, as this is the file server combination we will use for the Samba 4.0 release. - For similar reasons, sites with ACLs stored by the ntvfs file server may wish to continue to use that file server implementation, as a posix ACL will similarly not be set in this case. - Replication of DNS data from one AD server to another may not work. The DNS data used by the internal DNS server and bind9_dlz is stored in an application partition in our directory. The replication of this partition is not yet reliable. - Replication may fail on FreeBSD due to getaddrinfo() rejecting names containing _. A workaround will be in a future release. - samba_upgradeprovision should not be run when upgrading to this release from a recent release. No important database format changes have been made since alpha16. - Installation on systems without a system iconv (and developer headers at compile time) is known to cause errors when dealing with non-ASCII characters. - Domain member support in the 'samba' binary is in its infancy, and is not comparable to the support found in winbindd. As such, do not use the 'samba' binary (provided for the AD server) on a member server. - There is no NetBIOS browsing support (network neighbourhood) available for the AD domain controller. (Support in nmbd and smbd for classic domains and member/standalone servers is unchanged). - 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 alphas are partly to assist with this problem). - The DRS replication code may fail. Please contact the team if you experience issues with DRS replication, as we have fixed many issues here in response to feedback from our production users. RUNNING Samba 4.0 as an AD DC ============================= A short guide to setting up Samba 4 as an AD DC can be found on the wiki: http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/HOWTO ####################################### 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 4.0 product in the project's Bugzilla database (https://bugzilla.samba.org/). ====================================================================== == Our Code, Our Bugs, Our Responsibility. == The Samba Team ======================================================================