-What's new in Samba 4 alpha3
+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 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.
+Samba4 alpha5 follows on from the alpha release series we have been
+publishing since September 2007
WARNINGS
========
-Samba4 alpha3 is not a final Samba release. That is more a reference
+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
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
+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
We are aiming for Samba 4 to be powerful frontend to large
directories.
-CHANGES SINCE Alpha2
+CHANGES SINCE Alpha4
=====================
-In the time since Samba4 Alpha2 was released in December 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:
- 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.
+ LDAP backend support restored (issues preventing the use of the LDAP
+ backend in alpha4 have been addressed).
- 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.
+ SMB2 Support: The SMB2 server, while still disabled, has improved,
+ and now supports SMB2 signing.
- Oplock support: Samba4's file server now supports oplocks
+ OpenChange support: Updates have been made since alpha4 to better
+ support OpenChange's use of Samba4's libraries.
- GNU Make: To try and simplfy our build system, we rely on GNU Make
- to avoid autogenerating a massive single makefile.
+ 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.
- Account Expiry: Samba4 now better handles installations over 30 days
- old (thanks to our long-suffering testers for keeping installations
- around that long!)
+ 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).
- Registry: Samba4 registry interoperability has been improved in
- both the client utilities and in the registry service exposed by
- the Samba4 server itself.
+ GNU Make: To try and simplfy our build system, we rely on GNU Make
+ to avoid autogenerating a massive single makefile.
- 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 GIT history.
- There is no printing support in the current release.
+- 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.
+ 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
==============
git.samba.org / tprouty / samba.git / blobdiff