1What's new in Samba 4 alpha8 2============================ 3 4Samba 4 is the ambitious next version of the Samba suite that is being 5developed in parallel to the stable 3.0 series. The main emphasis in 6this branch is support for the Active Directory logon protocols used 7by Windows 2000 and above. 8 9Samba4 alpha8 follows on from the alpha release series we have been 10publishing since September 2007 11 12WARNINGS 13======== 14 15Samba4 alpha8 is not a final Samba release. That is more a reference 16to Samba4's lack of the features we expect you will need than a 17statement of code quality, but clearly it hasn't seen a broad 18deployment yet. If you were to upgrade Samba3 (or indeed Windows) to 19Samba4, you would find many things work, but that other key features 20you may have relied on simply are not there yet. 21 22For example, while Samba 3.0 is an excellent member of a Active 23Directory domain, Samba4 is happier as a domain controller, and it is 24in this role where it has seen deployment into production. 25 26Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an 27automated basis, we have found Samba4 to be very stable in it's 28behaviour. We have to recommend against upgrading production servers 29from Samba 3 to Samba 4 at this stage, because there may be the features on 30which you may rely that are not present, or the mapping of 31your configuration and user database may not be complete. 32 33If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba4, you should 34backup all configuration and data. 35 36NEW FEATURES 37============ 38 39Samba4 supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon environment 40used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain join 41and domain logon operations with these clients. 42 43Our Domain Controller (DC) implementation includes our own built-in 44LDAP server and Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) as well as the 45Samba3-like logon services provided over CIFS. We correctly generate 46the infamous Kerberos PAC, and include it with the Kerberos tickets we 47issue. 48 49The new VFS features in Samba 4 adapts the filesystem on the server to 50match the Windows client semantics, allowing Samba 4 to better match 51windows behaviour and application expectations. This includes file 52annotation information (in streams) and NT ACLs in particular. The 53VFS is backed with an extensive automated test suite. 54 55A new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing 56Python programs to interface to Samba's internals. 57 58The Samba 4 architecture is based around an LDAP-like database that 59can use a range of modular backends. One of the backends supports 60standards compliant LDAP servers (including OpenLDAP), and we are 61working on modules to map between AD-like behaviours and this backend. 62We are aiming for Samba 4 to be powerful frontend to large 63directories. 64 65CHANGES SINCE alpha7 66===================== 67 68In the time since Samba4 alpha7 was released in Feburary 2009, Samba has 69continued to evolve, but you may particularly notice these areas 70(in no particular order): 71 72 Samba4 now includes the full AD schema, as used in Microsoft Windows 2008 73 74 LDB (the core Samba4 database library) now handles large number of 75 users and groups much more efficiently 76 77These are just some of the user-visible highlights of the work done in 78the past few months. More details of the work done 'under the hood' 79can be found in our GIT history. 80 81 82CHANGES 83======= 84 85Those familiar with Samba 3 can find a list of user-visible changes 86since that release series in the NEWS file. 87 88KNOWN ISSUES 89============ 90 91- Domain member support is in it's infancy, and is not comparable to 92 the support found in Samba3. 93 94- There is no printing support in the current release. 95 96- There is no NetBIOS browsing support in the current release 97 98- The Samba4 port of the CTDB clustering support is not yet complete 99 100- Clock Synchronisation is critical. Many 'wrong password' errors are 101 actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client 102 and server. (The NTP work in the previous alphas are partly to assist 103 with this problem). 104 105RUNNING Samba4 106============== 107 108A short guide to setting up Samba 4 can be found in the howto.txt file 109in root of the tarball. 110 111DEVELOPMENT and FEEDBACK 112======================== 113Bugs can be filed at https://bugzilla.samba.org/ but please be aware 114that many features are simply not expected to work at this stage. 115 116The Samba Wiki at http://wiki.samba.org should detail some of these 117development plans. 118 119Development and general discussion about Samba 4 happens mainly on 120the #samba-technical IRC channel (on irc.freenode.net) and 121the samba-technical mailing list (see http://lists.samba.org/ for 122details). 123 124