We are proud to a announce another alpha release of Samba 4.0, alpha 21 What's new in Samba 4 alpha21 ============================ 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 ======= Samba4 alpha21 is not a final Samba release, however we are now making good progress towards a Samba 4.0 release, of which this is a preview. Be aware the 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'. Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an automated basis, we have found Samba 4.0 to be very stable in it's behavior. However, we still recommend against upgrading production servers from Samba 3.x release to Samba 4.0 alpha at this stage. In particular note that the new default configuration 's3fs' may have different stability characteristics compared with our previous default file server. We are making this release so that we can find and fix any of these issues that arise in the real world. New AD DC installations can provision with --use-ntvfs to obtain the previous default file server. Existing installations will be unaffected at this stage. If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba 4.0 alpha releases, you should backup all configuration and data. NEW FEATURES =========== Samba 4.0 alpha 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 alpha 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. For pure file server work, the binaries users would expect from that series (nmbd, winbindd, smbpasswd) continue to be available. 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. As mentioned above, this change to the default file server may cause instability, as we learn about the real-world interactions between these two key components. 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 alpha20 ==================== For a list of changes since alpha20, please see the git log. $ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git $ cd samba.git $ git log samba-4.0.0alpha20..samba-4.0.0alpha21 Some major user-visible changes include: For installations that do not need an AD Domain controller, we can now build using MIT Kerberos from the local system. This is important for some distributors. This is enabled with the new --with-system-mitkrb5 configure option. A synonym is the new --without-ad-dc option. The 's3fs' effort has moved to a new stage, with this now being the default mode of operation for new provisions. The BIND 9 DLZ plugin has had some stability improvements under BIND reloads. The 'samba-tool domain samba3upgrade' tool will now generally import all group members, and correctly imports domain password policies. Some major but less visible changes include: Continued early implementation work on the SMB 2.2 protocol client and server as the team improves and develops support these new protocols. KNOWN ISSUES =========== - We are making this alpha release to gain real-world use of the 's3fs' file server combination we will use for the Samba 4.0 release. Users should expect some rough edges: in particular, there are warnings about invalid parameters from the two respective parameter parsing engines. - There have been improvements to FreeBSD support, but more work is still required to finish this effort - 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 it's 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) in the 'samba' binary (use nmbd and smbd instead) - 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 ===================================================================== Download Details =============== The release tarball is available from the following location: * http://download.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba4/samba-4.0.0alpha21.tar.gz This release has been signed using GPG with Andrew's GPG key 28B436BB). * http://download.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba4/samba-4.0.0alpha21.tar.asc To verify that the signature is correct, make sure that the tarball has been unzipped and run: $ gpg --verify samba-4.0.0alpha21.tar.asc Happy testing! The Samba team -- Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/ Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org
We are proud to a announce another alpha release of Samba 4.0, alpha 21 What''s new in Samba 4 alpha21 ============================ 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 ======= Samba4 alpha21 is not a final Samba release, however we are now making good progress towards a Samba 4.0 release, of which this is a preview. Be aware the 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''. Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an automated basis, we have found Samba 4.0 to be very stable in it''s behavior. However, we still recommend against upgrading production servers from Samba 3.x release to Samba 4.0 alpha at this stage. In particular note that the new default configuration ''s3fs'' may have different stability characteristics compared with our previous default file server. We are making this release so that we can find and fix any of these issues that arise in the real world. New AD DC installations can provision with --use-ntvfs to obtain the previous default file server. Existing installations will be unaffected at this stage. If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba 4.0 alpha releases, you should backup all configuration and data. NEW FEATURES =========== Samba 4.0 alpha 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 alpha 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. For pure file server work, the binaries users would expect from that series (nmbd, winbindd, smbpasswd) continue to be available. 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. As mentioned above, this change to the default file server may cause instability, as we learn about the real-world interactions between these two key components. 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 alpha20 ==================== For a list of changes since alpha20, please see the git log. $ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git $ cd samba.git $ git log samba-4.0.0alpha20..samba-4.0.0alpha21 Some major user-visible changes include: For installations that do not need an AD Domain controller, we can now build using MIT Kerberos from the local system. This is important for some distributors. This is enabled with the new --with-system-mitkrb5 configure option. A synonym is the new --without-ad-dc option. The ''s3fs'' effort has moved to a new stage, with this now being the default mode of operation for new provisions. The BIND 9 DLZ plugin has had some stability improvements under BIND reloads. The ''samba-tool domain samba3upgrade'' tool will now generally import all group members, and correctly imports domain password policies. Some major but less visible changes include: Continued early implementation work on the SMB 2.2 protocol client and server as the team improves and develops support these new protocols. KNOWN ISSUES =========== - We are making this alpha release to gain real-world use of the ''s3fs'' file server combination we will use for the Samba 4.0 release. Users should expect some rough edges: in particular, there are warnings about invalid parameters from the two respective parameter parsing engines. - There have been improvements to FreeBSD support, but more work is still required to finish this effort - 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 it''s 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) in the ''samba'' binary (use nmbd and smbd instead) - 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 ===================================================================== Download Details =============== The release tarball is available from the following location: * http://download.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba4/samba-4.0.0alpha21.tar.gz This release has been signed using GPG with Andrew''s GPG key 28B436BB). * http://download.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba4/samba-4.0.0alpha21.tar.asc To verify that the signature is correct, make sure that the tarball has been unzipped and run: $ gpg --verify samba-4.0.0alpha21.tar.asc Happy testing! The Samba team -- Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/ Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org