It's been some time since I didn't send an update about samba packages
in Debian. Here it is. Fairly long, sorry for this.
As preliminary facts: Debian entered a full freeze in Mid-August, in
preparation of the next release, codename "squeeze". It means that
packages uploaded to Debian unstable no longer migrate to testing
(which is "the next release", so squeeze right now) when they had 10
days without RC bugs and when they're built on all supported
architectures.
During a freeze, packages do migrate semi-manually after being
unblocked by Debian release team on request of the package
maintainers. The release team requests avoiding upstream version
updates during a freeze.
Situation of samba in squeeze
-----------------------------
We will have samba 3.5 in squeeze. At this moment, this is 3.5.5. We
are very grateful to Debian release team as they allowed upgrading
from 3.4.8 to 3.5.* *during the freeze* which breaks the official
freeze rules!
I have some hope to convince our RT to follow next 3.5 updates but
that will be on a case by case basis. The clear policy adopted by the
Samba Team for updates will help..:-)
We have one release critical bug to tackle:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=593823
(undeclared library backwards-incompatibility between 3.2.5 and
3.4...probably 3.5 also, in libwbclient)
Situation of samba in lenny
---------------------------
(lenny is the current stable release of Debian. Release in Feb. 2009,
it has samba 3.2.5)
We updated our 3.2.5 packages with the patch for the last unveiled
security issue (CVE-2019-3069). Users of lenny who have
security.debian.org in their sources.list files probably already got
the update.
Situation of samba in experimental
----------------------------------
Debian experimental is meant for prospective package
development. During freezes, it's often use to have last upstream
releases when they're not suitable anymore in unstable because of the
freeze.
At this moment, we no longer have interesting stuff there (we used to
have 3.5 when the target for squeeze was 3.4.*).
We will probably have 3.6. However, my last attempts to build it when
3.6.0pre1 was released resulted in a failure because of disappearing
symbols in libraries (which should be discussed with the Samba Team).
Situation of Samba 4
--------------------
No samba4 packages in squeeze. Packages are judged as too experimental
yet.
Old outdated samba4 packages are currently in unstable. More recent
ones are in experimental.
The plan is to update packages in unstable with the last released
version of samba4 (alpha14). Jelmer Vernooij is in charge of this and
will do it...as soon as he finds a timeslot for that..:)
Backports for lenny
-------------------
Debian recently integrated "backports" as a (nearly) fully official
service (well, some implementation issues remain to be done in the BTS).
"Official" backports for Debian stable (so, lenny, ATM) follow a
strict
policy. The packages have to be the same version than the one in
testing and maintainers must commit to update them as carefully as
they'd do for packages in Debian stable.
See http://backports.debian.org for details and instructions about how
to use backports
Official backports for samba now feature samba 3.5.5 since a few
days. These packages are as close as possible to those in squeeze
(some packaging features that don't exist in lenny are dropped, though).
Unofficial backports
--------------------
Besides official backports, we do maintain unofficial packages for
users who might want different packages than those officially
supported.
Please be warned that these packages are updated less frequently then
official ones. This might be a concern for those who are keen about
security fixes.
These unofficial backports live at http://pkg-samba.alioth.debian.org.
They're built for i386 and amd64 architectures only.
At this moment, we have there:
- no longer maintained backports for etch. Don't use them. Don't use
etch anymore..:-). Yes, I should remove that old crap.
- "lenny-backports": these feature samba 3.2.15 (latest released 3.2)
for those users who want to stick with 3.2 on their servers (for
instance, because they haven't gone through all regression tests
on mission critical servers)...but are hit by some bug of 3.2.5
I actually needed those for a server of mine and decided to share
them..:-)
- "lenny-backports-latest": these feature, for lenny, the last version
of samba released by the Samba Team when we cannot have it in official
backports.
At this moment, there is nothing interesting there (indeed, there is
3.5.4) as official backports *do* have the latest released samba.
I should even remove what's there right now.
3.6 packages for lenny will probably land there when 3.6 is released.
We hope that this status update is helping users of samba in
Debian. Please don't hesitate to discuss issues and wishes in mailing
lists on samba.org, we try to be watching out things there...at least
/me..:-)
In name of the packaging team for samba and related packages in Debian
(No?l K?the, Steve Langasek, Mathieu Parent, Christian Perrier, Jelmer
Vernooij).
