1 What's new in Samba 4.0 beta8
2 =============================
4 Samba 4.0 will be the next version of the Samba suite and incorporates
5 all the technology found in both the Samba4 alpha series and the
6 stable 3.x series. The primary additional features over Samba 3.6 are
7 support for the Active Directory logon protocols used by Windows 2000
14 Samba 4.0 beta8 is not a final Samba release, however we are now making
15 good progress towards a Samba 4.0 release. However, this is expected to be the
16 last beta release before we start on our release candidate series.
18 This release contains the best of all of Samba's
19 technology parts, both a file server (that you can reasonably expect
20 to upgrade existing Samba 3.x releases to) and the AD domain
21 controller work previously known as 'samba4'.
23 Samba 4.0 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an automated
24 basis, we have found Samba 4.0 to be very stable in it's behaviour.
25 However, as with all our pre-releases we still recommend against
26 upgrading production servers from Samba 3.x release to Samba 4.0 beta
29 If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba 4.0
30 beta releases, you should backup all configuration and data.
36 Users upgrading from Samba 3.x domain controllers and wanting to use
37 Samba 4.0 as an AD DC should use the 'samba-tool domain
38 classicupgrade' command. See the wiki for more details:
39 https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/samba3upgrade/HOWTO
41 Users upgrading from Samba 4.0 alpha and beta releases since alpha15
42 should run 'samba-tool dbcheck --cross-ncs --fix' before re-starting
43 Samba. Users upgrading from earlier alpha releases should contact the
46 Users upgrading an AD DC from any previous release should run
47 'samba-tool ntacl sysvolreset' to re-sync ACLs on the sysvol share
48 with those matching the GPOs in LDAP and the defaults from an initial
49 provision. This will set an underlying POSIX ACL if required (eg not
50 using the NTVFS file server).
55 Samba 4.0 beta supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon
56 environment used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain
57 join and domain logon operations with these clients.
59 Our Domain Controller (DC) implementation includes our own built-in
60 LDAP server and Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) as well as the
61 Samba3-like logon services provided over CIFS. We correctly generate
62 the infamous Kerberos PAC, and include it with the Kerberos tickets we
65 Samba 4.0 beta ships with two distinct file servers. We now use the
66 file server from the Samba 3.x series 'smbd' for all file serving by
69 Samba 4.0 also ships with the 'NTVFS' file server. This file server
70 is what was used in all previous alpha releases of Samba 4.0, and is
71 tuned to match the requirements of an AD domain controller. We
72 continue to support this, not only to provide continuity to
73 installations that have deployed it as part of an AD DC, but also as a
74 running example of the NT-FSA architecture we expect to move smbd to in
77 For pure file server work, the binaries users would expect from that
78 series (nmbd, winbindd, smbpasswd) continue to be available. When
79 running an AD DC, you only need to run 'samba' (not
80 nmbd/smbd/winbind), as the required services are co-coordinated by this
83 As DNS is an integral part of Active Directory, we also provide a DNS
84 solution, using the BIND DLZ mechanism in versions 9.8 and 9.9.
85 During the provision, a configuration file will be generated for bind
86 to make it use this plugin. We also have a project to provide a
87 minimal internal DNS server from within the Samba process, for easier
88 'out of the box' configuration. Note however that this is not yet
89 complete (pending addition of secure DNS update support).
91 To provide accurate timestamps to Windows clients, we integrate with
92 the NTP project to provide secured NTP replies. To use you need to
93 start ntpd and configure it with the 'restrict ... ms-sntp' and
94 ntpsigndsocket options.
96 Finally, a new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing
97 Python programs to interface to Samba's internals, and many tools and
98 internal workings of the DC code is now implemented in python.
102 =====================
104 For a list of changes since beta7, please see the git log.
106 $ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git
108 $ git log samba-4.0.0beta7..samba-4.0.0beta8
110 Some major user-visible changes include:
112 - A fix for a segfault/abort on startup of the 'samba' binary in the
113 credentials_secrets code.
115 - A fix for samba-tool classicupgrade of pdb_ldap-based domains
117 - A fix for samba-tool domain exportkeyab only exporting DES keys
119 - Printing is now enabled on the AD DC
121 - Fix bug #9124 - Samba fails to set "inherited" bit on inherited ACE's.
123 - We now avoid printing secret attributes (such as unicodePwd and
124 suppliementalCredentials) in ldb trace logs
126 - s3-printing: fix bug 9123 lprng job tracking errors
128 - A fix for building with MIT Kerberos
133 - 'samba-tool domain classicupgrade' will fail when setting ACLs on
134 the GPO folders with NT_STATUS_INVALID_ONWER in the default
135 configuration. This happens if, as is typical a 'domain admins'
136 group (-512) is mapped in the passdb backend being upgraded. This
137 is because the group mapping to a GID only prevents Samba from
138 allocating a uid for that group. The uid is needed so the 'domain
139 admins' group can own the GPO file objects.
141 To work around this issue, remove the 'domain admins' group before
142 upgrade, as it will be re-created automatically. You will
143 of course need to fill in the group membership again. A future release
144 will make this automatic, or find some other workaround.
146 - This release makes the s3fs file server the default, as this is the
147 file server combination we will use for the Samba 4.0 release.
149 - For similar reasons, sites with ACLs stored by the ntvfs file server
150 may wish to continue to use that file server implementation, as a
151 posix ACL will similarly not be set in this case.
153 - Replication of DNS data from one AD server to another may not work.
154 The DNS data used by the internal DNS server and bind9_dlz is stored
155 in an application partition in our directory. The replication of
156 this partition is not yet reliable.
158 - Replication may fail on FreeBSD due to getaddrinfo() rejecting names
159 containing _. A workaround will be in a future beta.
161 - upgradeprovision should not be run when upgrading to this release
162 from a recent release. No important database format changes have
163 been made since alpha16.
165 - Installation on systems without a system iconv (and developer
166 headers at compile time) is known to cause errors when dealing with
167 non-ASCII characters.
169 - Domain member support in the 'samba' binary is in it's infancy, and
170 is not comparable to the support found in winbindd. As such, do not
171 use the 'samba' binary (provided for the AD server) on a member
174 - There is no NetBIOS browsing support (network neighbourhood)
175 available for the AD domain controller. (Support in nmbd and smbd
176 for classic domains and member/standalone servers is unchanged).
178 - Clock Synchronisation is critical. Many 'wrong password' errors are
179 actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client
180 and server. (The NTP work in the previous alphas are partly to assist
183 - The DRS replication code may fail. Please contact the team if you
184 experience issues with DRS replication, as we have fixed many issues
185 here in response to feedback from our production users.
188 RUNNING Samba 4.0 as an AD DC
189 =============================
191 A short guide to setting up Samba 4 as an AD DC can be found on the wiki:
193 http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/HOWTO
195 #######################################
196 Reporting bugs & Development Discussion
197 #######################################
199 Please discuss this release on the samba-technical mailing list or by
200 joining the #samba-technical IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.
202 If you do report problems then please try to send high quality
203 feedback. If you don't provide vital information to help us track down
204 the problem then you will probably be ignored. All bug reports should
205 be filed under the Samba 4.0 product in the project's Bugzilla
206 database (https://bugzilla.samba.org/).
209 ======================================================================
210 == Our Code, Our Bugs, Our Responsibility.
212 ======================================================================