samba - Oct 2013 - Please update docs

Hi,

For me the main challenge in updating to samba 4 are docs. This was also 
the case with samba 3, but 4 is a lot more challenging. I end up 
spending hours testing different variants, because by reading docs I 
cannot find answers, even after hours of searching.

The results of google-search are a mixture of pages for samba 3, samba 
4, and some where it's unclear which version they describe.

A very frequent find is
    http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/using_samba/toc.html
but many things there don't match any samba version that I know. The 
best strategy seems to be to avoid that URL. These pages should at least 
have a note on top saying for which version of samba they were meant.

Another great difficulty is versions of man pages.
There are two directories:
    http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages
    http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages-3
Are all pages in the first of them supposed to be for Samba 4?

Some of the pages there contain a note at the bottom saying that they 
are for version 3. Some contain no such info. Does this mean that the 
described functionality is the same in samba 3 and samba 4? Or have 
these pages just not yet been updated, and it's up to the readers to 
find out?

Some pages say that they are for version 4, but which subversion? For 
example
    http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages/smb.conf.5.html
says it's for version 4, but it cannot be for version 4.0.10, because 
the option "acl allow execute always" is missing. How often are these 
web pages updated?

Also many new features aren't yet mentioned anywhere, for example I just 
found that
    vfs objects = acl_xattr
is now active by default in some cases.
(https://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2013-October/175862.html)

It's even difficult to find the basics like why kerberos, where does 
samba4 store which info, how to manually interact with the internal DNS, 
which packages must be installed in debian to make it work, etc.

Standard procedure seems to be to compile it yourself, that wasn't the 
case with samba 3. How long do you expect will vendors like ubuntu need 
until they include samba 4? Right now the authors of the ubuntu server 
manual obviously haven't noticed that samba 4 exists.

regard,
Klaus

On Thu, 2013-10-10 at 16:56 +0200, Klaus Hartnegg wrote:
> Hi,
> Standard procedure seems to be to compile it yourself, that wasn't the 
> case with samba 3. How long do you expect will vendors like ubuntu need 
> until they include samba 4? Right now the authors of the ubuntu server 
> manual obviously haven't noticed that samba 4 exists.
The lack of packaging by debian-based vendors of the full Samba 4.0 is a
concern, but is addressed by:
 - the packages in debian experimental, soon to be in debian unstable
 - the packages provided by sernet

Presumably the Debian packages will be picked up by Ubuntu at some
point, but you would need to ask them as to what determines their
priorities here. 

The Samba Team does not control what version distributors choose to
package, but I have personally worked extensively with the Debian Samba
packaging team to assist in their packaging work.

Fedora shipped Samba 4.0 as soon as it was released, but does not ship
the Active Directory domain controller.  

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett
http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT                   http://catalyst.net.nz