We are proud to a announce another alpha release of Samba 4, alpha 14,
codenamed "randomdata".
What's new in Samba 4 alpha14
============================
Samba 4 is the ambitious next version of the Samba suite that is being
developed in parallel to the stable 3.x series. The main emphasis in
this branch is support for the Active Directory logon protocols used
by Windows 2000 and above.
Samba4 alpha14 follows on from the alpha release series we have been
publishing since September 2007.
WARNINGS
=======
Samba4 alpha14 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 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
===========
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.
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
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
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 SINCE alpha13
====================We have continued our commitment to provide a full DRS
implementation
for our AD implementation and therefore achieved also this time big
steps forward.
Our progress on DRS is being tracked in the Samba wiki:
http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4_DRS_TODO_List
Beside this the release includes (among a lot of other things):
* a script for backuping production provision
Although still in development, samba4 is already used in a couple of
production sites and such kind of use case is intensifying. This script
is intended for administrators to allow them to make a periodic backup
of the provision in case of problem.
* the 'net' command has been renamed to 'samba-tool'
CHANGES
======
Those familiar with Samba 3 can find a list of user-visible changes
since that release series in the NEWS file.
KNOWN ISSUES
===========
- 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.
- There is no NetBIOS browsing support in the current release
- The Samba4 port of the CTDB clustering support is not yet complete
- Clock synchronization 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 fails, and is very new
- Users upgrading existing databases to Samba4 should carefully
consult upgrading-samba4.txt. We have made a number of changes in
this release that should make it easier to upgrade in future.
Btw: there exists also a script under the "setup" directory of the
source distribution called "upgrade_from_s3" which should allow a
step-up from Samba3 to Samba4. It's not included yet in the binary
distributions since it's completely experimental!
RUNNING Samba4
=============
A short guide to setting up Samba 4 can be found on the wiki:
http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/HOWTO
DEVELOPMENT and FEEDBACK
=======================
We need your help! Projects as Samba 4 live from the community feedback.
If you provide expressive bug reports, some documentation snippets on
the wiki or some real code patches - all is appreciated if it meets our
quality criterias. Here you can find further references:
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
the samba-technical mailing list (see http://lists.samba.org/ for
details).
Download Details
===============
The release tarball is available from the following location:
* http://download.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba4/samba-4.0.0alpha14.tar.gz
This release has been signed using GPG with Jelmer's GPG keys (1EEF5276,
D729A457).
* http://download.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba4/samba-4.0.0alpha14.tar.asc
To verify that the signature is correct, make sure that the tarball has
been unzipped and run:
$ gpg --verify samba-4.0.0alpha14.tar.asc
Happy testing!
The Samba team
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