-What's new in Samba 4 Technology Preview
-========================================
-
-Samba 4 is the ambitious next version of the Samba suite that is being
-developed in parallel to the stable 3.0 series. The main emphasis in
-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.
-
-With 3 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), it was felt that we
-should create something we could 'show off' to our users. This is a
-Technology Preview (TP), aimed at allowing users, managers and
-developers to see how we have progressed, and to invite feedback and
-support.
-
-WARNINGS
-========
-
-Samba4 TP is currently a pre-alpha technology. It may eat your cat, but
-is far more likely to choose to munch on your password database. 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.
-
-We expect that format changes will require that the user database be
-rebuilt from scratch a number of times before we make a final release,
-losing password data each time.
-
-Samba 4 Technology Preview includes basic Access Control List (ACL)
-protection on the main user database, but due to time constraints,
-none on the registry at this stage. We also do not currently have
-ACLs on the SWAT web-based management tool. This means that Samba 4
-Technology Preview is not secure.
-
-File system access should occur as the logged in user, much as Samba3
-does.
-
-Again, we strongly recommend against use in a production environment
-at this stage.
-
-NEW FEATURES
-============
-
-Samba4 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.
-
-SWAT is now integrated into Samba 4 as the user-friendly interface to
-Samba server management. SWAT provides easy access to our
-setup and migration tools. Using SWAT, you can migrate windows
-domains in Samba 4, allowing easy setup of initial user databases, and
-upgrades from Samba 3.
-
-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
-annotation information (in streams) and NT ACLs in particular. The
-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.
-
-The Samba 4 architecture is based around an LDAP-like database that
-can use a range of modular backends. One of the backends supports
-standards compliant LDAP servers (including OpenLDAP), and we are
-working on modules to map between AD-like behaviours and this backend.
-We are aiming for Samba 4 to be powerful frontend to large
-directories.
-
-CHANGES
-=======
-
-Those familiar with Samba 3 can find a list of user-visible changes
-since that release series in the NEWS file.
-
- - An optional password is no longer supported as the second argument to
- smbclient.
-
-KNOWN ISSUES
-============
-
-- Standalone server and domain member roles are not currently
- supported. While we have much of the infrastructure required, we
- have not collected these pieces together.
-
-- There is no printing support in the current release.
-
-- SWAT can be painful with <TAB> and forms. Just use the mouse, as
- the JavaScript layer doing this will change.
-
-- Domain logons (using Kerberos) from windows clients incorrectly
- state that the password expires today.
-
-RUNNING Samba4
-==============
-
-A short guide to setting up Samba 4 can be found in the howto.txt file
-in root of the tarball.
-
-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.
-
-Development and general discussion about Samba 4 happens mainly on
-the #samba-technical IRC channel (on irc.freenode.net) and
-the samba-technical mailing list (see http://lists.samba.org/ for
-details).
+'Samba4 TP4' presents you with an opportunity to see a Technology
+Preview (TP) snapshot of Samba4's development, as at January 2007.
+
+In the last few months since TP3 was released in October 2006,
+significant work has been done across many parts of Samba4. Since that
+time, we have added the basis for some new and exciting features:
+
+ PKINIT support to Samba4's KDC will allow, smart-card login to a
+ Samba4 domain. TP4 demonstrates this with static key files, but
+ work will continue to enable actual hardware cards.
+
+ Clustering support was always a design goal of Samba4, and with TP4
+ we have the ctdb framework, a cluster-aware shared database. This
+ allows Samba4 to share a shared cluster file-system with it's clients.
+ Presented at this year's linux.conf.au, including a highly rigged
+ demo, you can expect to see this mature over the next few months.
+
+ Non-blocking and Asynchronous IO support, has always been a design
+ goal in Samba4, and TP4 will use new Linux Kernel features to
+ implement event driven asynchronous IO. This makes Samba more
+ efficient on systems where some data may be 'further away' than a
+ local disk, such as HSM systems. This allows the Kernel to handle
+ reading the returned data from the disk, only notifying Samba when
+ the data is ready for dispatch to the client.
+
+ Our web-management console, known as SWAT, is being revamped, and in
+ TP4 you can find a new Web 2.0 style user interface, being used to
+ support a web-based ldb browser. We hope this new system will allow
+ things simple not possible with the form-submit style of web
+ management.
+
+ Using LDB LDAP back-end integration has improved in this release, with an
+ improved mapping module allowing the start of Fedora DS back-end
+ support.
+
+In continuing our research effort, TP4 includes the work to better
+understand and implement the DRSUAPI replication protocols. By better
+understanding the needs of replication now, we can structure our
+databases so that their format will have to change less in future.
+
+We hope to use this replication function to replace the SamSync based
+Vampire process so effectively demonstrated since TP1, and to
+eventually join an Active Directory domain, as a replicating partner.
+
+Behind the scenes, much of the core infrastructure of Samba4 continues
+development:
+
+ In Kerberos, we have continued to track the development of the
+ Heimdal Kerberos implementation, and reduce the custom diff between
+ our branch and upstream. Heimdal now provides plug-in APIs for
+ almost all of the hooks we need, including management and validation
+ of the PAC.
+
+ In testing, our test infrastructure has undergone a quiet
+ revolution, as we improve our unit test framework. Likewise, the
+ tests themselves have continued to expand, as we follow our
+ test-driven development pattern.
+
+ In providing an abstraction above our raw RPC layer, the libnet
+ library continues to expand, becoming a C and JS management API for
+ Samba4 and remote servers.
+
+ To ensure that, as an administrator and developer, you can easily
+ read and edit our internal databases, our LDB layer has been
+ optimised for speed. The aim here is to avoid needing to use the faster, but
+ more opaque, TDB layer.
+
+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.
+
git.samba.org / sfrench / samba-autobuild / .git / blobdiff