1 What's new in Samba 4.0 beta6
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 beta6 is not a final Samba release, however we are now making
15 good progress towards a Samba 4.0 release, of which this is a preview.
16 Be aware the this release contains the best of all of Samba's
17 technology parts, both a file server (that you can reasonably expect
18 to upgrade existing Samba 3.x releases to) and the AD domain
19 controller work previously known as 'samba4'.
21 Samba 4.0 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an automated
22 basis, we have found Samba 4.0 to be very stable in it's behavior.
23 However, we still recommend against upgrading production servers from
24 Samba 3.x release to Samba 4.0 beta at this stage.
26 In particular note that the new default configuration 's3fs' may have
27 different stability characteristics compared with our previous default
28 file server. We are making this release so that we can find and fix
29 any of these issues that arise in the real world. New AD DC
30 installations can provision or join with --use-ntvfs to obtain the
31 previous default file server. See below how to continue using ntvfs
32 in an existing installation.
34 If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba 4.0
35 beta releases, you should backup all configuration and data.
41 Users upgrading from Samba 3.x domain controllers and wanting to use
42 Samba 4.0 as an AD DC should use the 'samba-tool domain
43 classicupgrade' command. See the wiki for more details:
44 https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/samba3upgrade/HOWTO
46 Users upgrading from Samba 4.0 alpha and beta releases since alpha15
47 should run 'samba-tool dbcheck --cross-ncs --fix'. Users upgrading
48 from earlier alpha releases should contact the team for advice.
54 Samba 4.0 beta supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon
55 environment used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain
56 join and domain logon operations with these clients.
58 Our Domain Controller (DC) implementation includes our own built-in
59 LDAP server and Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) as well as the
60 Samba3-like logon services provided over CIFS. We correctly generate
61 the infamous Kerberos PAC, and include it with the Kerberos tickets we
64 Samba 4.0 beta ships with two distinct file servers. We now use the
65 file server from the Samba 3.x series 'smbd' for all file serving by
66 default. For pure file server work, the binaries users would expect
67 from that series (nmbd, winbindd, smbpasswd) continue to be available.
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 As mentioned above, this change to the default file server may cause
78 instability, as we learn about the real-world interactions between
79 these two key components.
81 As DNS is an integral part of Active Directory, we also provide a DNS
82 solution, using the BIND DLZ mechanism in versions 9.8 and 9.9.
83 During the provision, a configuration file will be generated for bind
84 to make it use this plugin. We also have a project to provide a
85 minimal internal DNS server from within the Samba process, for easier
86 'out of the box' configuration. Note however that this is not yet
87 complete (pending addition of secure DNS update support).
89 To provide accurate timestamps to Windows clients, we integrate with
90 the NTP project to provide secured NTP replies.
92 Finally, a new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing
93 Python programs to interface to Samba's internals, and many tools and
94 internal workings of the DC code is now implemented in python.
100 For a list of changes since beta5, please see the git log.
102 $ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git
104 $ git log samba-4.0.0beta5..samba-4.0.0beta6
106 Some major user-visible changes include:
108 - Provision is now faster, as we now correctly use the database
109 indicies during the provision
111 - Support for handling of Extended Signatures (Session Key Protection)
113 - A (unverified at this time) fix for expanding memory use in our
114 AD DRS replication server.
116 - A fix for supporting the userWorkstations restriction in the KDC
118 - Support for upgrading classic domains that may not have all the
119 default domain policies set.
121 Less visible, but important changes under the hood include:
123 - Continued work to support SMB2 and SMB3
125 - Continued work to use async IO to improve file server performance.
127 - Patches to ensure that talloc_tos() and talloc_stackframe() are
128 always used correctly.
130 - Preparation for correctly setting POSIX ACLs during provision.
135 - This release makes the s3fs file server the default, as this is the
136 file server combination we will use for the Samba 4.0 release.
138 - Modifying of group policies by members of the Domain Administrators
139 group is not possible with the s3fs file server, only with the ntvfs
140 file server. This is due to the underlying POSIX ACL not being set
143 - For similar reasons, sites with ACLs stored by the ntvfs file server
144 may wish to continue to use that file server implementation, as a
145 posix ACL will similarly not be set in this case.
147 - Replication of DNS data from one AD server to another may not work.
148 The DNS data used by the internal DNS server and bind9_dlz is stored
149 in an application partition in our directory. The replication of
150 this partition is not yet reliable.
152 - Replication may fail on FreeBSD due to getaddrinfo() rejecting names
153 containing _. A workaround will be in a future next beta.
155 - upgradeprovision should not be run when upgrading to this release
156 from a recent release. No important database format changes have
157 been made since alpha16.
159 - Installation on systems without a system iconv (and developer
160 headers at compile time) is known to cause errors when dealing with
161 non-ASCII characters.
163 - Domain member support in the 'samba' binary is in it's infancy, and
164 is not comparable to the support found in winbindd. As such, do not
165 use the 'samba' binary (provided for the AD server) on a member
168 - There is no NetBIOS browsing support (network neighbourhood) in the
169 'samba' binary (use nmbd and smbd instead)
171 - Clock Synchronisation is critical. Many 'wrong password' errors are
172 actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client
173 and server. (The NTP work in the previous alphas are partly to assist
176 - The DRS replication code may fail. Please contact the team if you
177 experience issues with DRS replication, as we have fixed many issues
178 here in response to feedback from our production users.
181 RUNNING Samba 4.0 as an AD DC
182 =============================
184 A short guide to setting up Samba 4 as an AD DC can be found on the wiki:
186 http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/HOWTO
188 #######################################
189 Reporting bugs & Development Discussion
190 #######################################
192 Please discuss this release on the samba-technical mailing list or by
193 joining the #samba-technical IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.
195 If you do report problems then please try to send high quality
196 feedback. If you don't provide vital information to help us track down
197 the problem then you will probably be ignored. All bug reports should
198 be filed under the Samba 4.0 product in the project's Bugzilla
199 database (https://bugzilla.samba.org/).
202 ======================================================================
203 == Our Code, Our Bugs, Our Responsibility.
205 ======================================================================