[Samba] Concerns about Samba4

Laurent Pinchart
2007-02-26T10:57:00Z

Hi everybody.

I attended the Samba conference at the FOSDEM yesterday. Jeremy Allison was
great, and explained very clearly the problems faced by implementing an
Active Directory controller.

The CIFS protocol is required in heterogenous environments. Jeremy made it
pretty clear that even in pure Unix environments, CIFS is quite superior to
NFSv4. Samba is thus a required component of pretty much any network, even
when using Unix workstations and servers only.

Implementing a Samba Active Directory domain controller requires more
components than for an NT4 domain controller. Samba will have to integrate an
LDAP server, a Kerberos server, a DNS server and a DHCP server. It will have
to implement remote registry access and many Windows-related DCE/RPC calls.
Those don't make much sense in Unix-only environments. Moreover, the LDAP
directory schema will have to match the Microsoft AD schema, which is badly
documented to say the least.

I'm concerned about all the unneeded features that will be introduced by
Samba4 in pure Unix environments, as well as by the implications that Samba4
will have on other services. The LDAP directory will have to implement the
Microsoft AD schema, which is not compatible with any current Unix
application. How will Samba4 interoperate with groupware softwares for
instance ? Has anyone thought about how to mix Unix LDAP-aware applications
with Samba4 ? Aren't we pushing bloated, buggy and badly thought
Microsoft "standards" to the Unix platform in the name of
interoperability
without thinking about the consequences this will have on other services and
on the overall stability ?

Thanks in advance to all of those who will prove me wrong and let me sleep
peacefully again :-)

Laurent Pinchart