s4: Should we still support the "domain mixed mode"?

[Andrew Kroeger]

Matthias Dieter Wallnöfer wrote:
> abartlet and others,
>  
> since I do some rewrite of the SAMLDB module of s4 at the moment (since I discovered that our actual not fits for future enhancements - discovered with tests and the WSPP documentation) I wanted to ask if we still should support the domain mixed mode.
> This as you may know would require some extra case distinguishing regarding the group handling (mainly the "member" attribute handling).
> If we aren't supporting it anymore we could save us some work.
>  
> Matthias

Matthias:

When you speak of "mixed mode", are you referring to NT-style domains 
being able to interoperate with AD domains or are you referring to 
different versions of MS AD (e.g. Win2K, Win2K3, Win2K3R2, Win2K8, 
Win2K8R2) working with each other?

If you are speaking of the former (NT-style domains being able to 
interoperate with AD domains), I would agree that we do not need to 
support these.  Windows NT has been EOL for quite some time now and 
providing support for it would divert development resources from 
implementing new functionality to patching/working around architectural 
limitations of the original NT domain implementation.

If, on the other hand, you are referring to interoperability between the 
different release versions of MS AD (Win2K, Win2K3, Win2K3R2, Win2K8, 
Win2K8R2, etc.), I believe we should strive to implement the most recent 
version of those protocols.  MS is continually releasing newer versions 
of their AD server technology.  If we implement the newest version 
within S4, we can (hopefully) guarantee backwards-compatibility within 
the MS AD implementation.

If you were referring to removing support for NT-style domains working 
within the S4 implementation, I believe there are a number of 
bugs/enhancements filed in the Samba bugzilla against S4 that should be 
closed as WONTFIX.  That is assuming we all agree on what level of 
interoperability will be supported in S4.

Sincerely,
Andrew Kroeger