Samba and Vista with IPv6 Presentation

[David Holder]

Dan,

> The key sentences I took away from the talk were:
>
>     Vista will only contact Active Directory DC over IPv6
>
> and 
>
>     Altho Samba3 works over IPv6, it won't work as a DC
>   
Almost correct! Samba3 doesn't work over IPv6. It can be made to listen 
on port 445 over IPv6 which is not the same thing. Regarding the first 
point, Vista will only join a AD domain over IPv6. It cannot join an NT 
domain over IPv6. Since Samba3 cannot be an AD DC Vista and Longhorn 
clients will not be able to join a Samba3 domain over IPv6 even if 
Samba3 is given IPv6 support.

I think that the most important  point is that I believe that the 
implementation of Windows Vista and Windows Longhorn will have a 
significant impact on the take up of IPv6. At one extreme there will be 
companies that are not interested in IPv6 that start using it simply by 
implementing Vista and Longhorn. At the other extreme you will find 
companies that need to move to IPv6 but that have been held back by the 
lack of full support in Windows. The release of Vista and Longhorn will 
allow them to go ahead and migrate to IPv6.

Keep in mind that IPv6 is the default stack for Vista and Longhorn, that 
it is used in preference to IPv4 and that it is difficult to disable 
completely.

Amongst these companies there will be many who are using Samba as an 
integration tool. They will need Samba to support IPv6. I was giving an 
IPv6 Security talk to a large EU organisation on Monday. I had not 
realised until Monday that they used Samba. The lack of IPv6 support in 
Samba will be a hinderence to them migrating to IPv6.

> Can I suggest you submit your patch(s) to the relevant bug(s), unless I
> was misreading you haven't done that yet.
I will submit patches for the ones I am able to do. Some of the bugs are 
very general and willl require a lot of changes in many different parts 
of the code. (Also, remember that I don't do much C programming, so any 
code I produce will be slow to write and bug rich!)

As I understand it there will need to be changes made to:
1) Build system
2) Testing
3) Server code
4) Client code
5) Confguration files
6) Management tools
7) Documentation

What I want to attempt to do is write up some IPv6 guidance. From 
talking to folks at SambaXP I believe that there are some key things 
that need to be understood in order to IPv6 enable Samba3 effectively. 
I'm also happy to help out constructing test labs, doing some testing 
and answering IPv6 questions.

David
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr David Holder CEng MIET MIEEE

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Dan Shearer wrote:
> On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 05:51:19PM +0100, David Holder wrote:
>   
>> I have put a PDF of my talk up on one of our web-sites at
>> http://www.ipv6consultancy.com/ipv6blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/samba-and-vista-with-ipv6v2.pdf. 
>> I had thought it would appear on www.sambaxp.org but it hasn't yet.
>>     
>
> The key sentences I took away from the talk were:
>
>     Vista will only contact Active Directory DC over IPv6
>
> and 
>
>     Altho Samba3 works over IPv6, it won't work as a DC
>
>   
>> I have logged a number of bugs regarding IPv6 and I still have quite a
>> number to log. I'm very happy to answer questions regarding IPv6 and to try
>> and help in this area if I can. I am very interested to hear from anyone is
>> also working with IPv6 and Samba.
>>     
>
> Can I suggest you submit your patch(s) to the relevant bug(s), unless I
> was misreading you haven't done that yet.
>
>