[ANNOUNCE] Samba 4.0 alpha 21

Andrew Bartlett abartlet at samba.org
Fri May 25 00:24:18 MDT 2012 

We are proud to a announce another alpha release of Samba 4.0, alpha 21

What's new in Samba 4 alpha21
=============================

Samba 4.0 will be the next version of the Samba suite and incorporates
all the technology found in both the Samba4 alpha series and the
stable 3.x series. The primary additional features over Samba 3.6 are
support for the Active Directory logon protocols used by Windows 2000
and above.


WARNINGS
========

Samba4 alpha21 is not a final Samba release, however we are now making
good progress towards a Samba 4.0 release, of which this is a preview.
Be aware the this release contains the best of all of Samba's
technology parts, both a file server (that you can reasonably expect
to upgrade existing Samba 3.x releases to) and the AD domain
controller work previously known as 'samba4'.

Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an automated
basis, we have found Samba 4.0 to be very stable in it's behavior.
However, we still recommend against upgrading production servers from
Samba 3.x release to Samba 4.0 alpha at this stage.

In particular note that the new default configuration 's3fs' may have
different stability characteristics compared with our previous default
file server.  We are making this release so that we can find and fix
any of these issues that arise in the real world.  New AD DC installations
can provision with --use-ntvfs to obtain the previous default file
server.  Existing installations will be unaffected at this stage.

If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba 4.0
alpha releases, you should backup all configuration and data.

NEW FEATURES
============

Samba 4.0 alpha supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon
environment used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain
join and domain logon operations with these clients.

Our Domain Controller (DC) implementation includes our own built-in
LDAP server and Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) as well as the
Samba3-like logon services provided over CIFS.  We correctly generate
the infamous Kerberos PAC, and include it with the Kerberos tickets we
issue.

Samba 4.0 alpha ships with two distinct file servers.  We now use the
file server from the Samba 3.x series 'smbd' for all file serving by
default.  For pure file server work, the binaries users would expect
from that series (nmbd, winbindd, smbpasswd) continue to be available.

Samba 4.0 also ships with the 'NTVFS' file server.  This file server
is what was used in all previous alpha releases of Samba 4.0, and is
tuned to match the requirements of an AD domain controller.  We
continue to support this, not only to provide continuity to
installations that have deployed it as part of an AD DC, but also as a
running example of the NT-FSA architecture we expect to move smbd to in
the longer term.  

As mentioned above, this change to the default file server may cause
instability, as we learn about the real-world interactions between
these two key components. 

A new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing Python
programs to interface to Samba's internals, and many tools and
internal workings of the DC code is now implemented in python.  



CHANGES SINCE alpha20
=====================

For a list of changes since alpha20, please see the git log.

$ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git
$ cd samba.git
$ git log samba-4.0.0alpha20..samba-4.0.0alpha21

Some major user-visible changes include:

For installations that do not need an AD Domain controller, we can now
build using MIT Kerberos from the local system.  This is important for
some distributors.  This is enabled with the new --with-system-mitkrb5
configure option.  A synonym is the new --without-ad-dc option.

The 's3fs' effort has moved to a new stage, with this now being the
default mode of operation for new provisions.  

The BIND 9 DLZ plugin has had some stability improvements under BIND reloads.

The 'samba-tool domain samba3upgrade' tool will now generally import
all group members, and correctly imports domain password policies. 

Some major but less visible changes include:

Continued early implementation work on the SMB 2.2 protocol client and server as
the team improves and develops support these new protocols.


KNOWN ISSUES
============

- We are making this alpha release to gain real-world use of the 's3fs'
  file server combination we will use for the Samba 4.0 release.
  Users should expect some rough edges: in particular, there are
  warnings about invalid parameters from the two respective parameter
  parsing engines.

- There have been improvements to FreeBSD support, but more work is
  still required to finish this effort

- upgradeprovision should not be run when upgrading to this release
  from a recent release.  No important database format changes have
  been made since alpha16.  

- Installation on systems without a system iconv (and developer
  headers at compile time) is known to cause errors when dealing with
  non-ASCII characters.

- Domain member support in the 'samba' binary is in it's infancy, and
  is not comparable to the support found in winbindd.  As such, do not
  use the 'samba' binary (provided for the AD server) on a member
  server.

- There is no NetBIOS browsing support (network neighbourhood) in the
  'samba' binary (use nmbd and smbd instead)

- Clock Synchronisation is critical.  Many 'wrong password' errors are
  actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client
  and server.  (The NTP work in the previous alphas are partly to assist
  with this problem).

- The DRS replication code may fail.  Please contact the team if you
  experience issues with DRS replication, as we have fixed many issues
  here in response to feedback from our production users. 

RUNNING Samba 4.0 as an AD DC
=============================

A short guide to setting up Samba 4 as an AD DC can be found on the wiki:

  http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/HOWTO

#######################################
Reporting bugs & Development Discussion
#######################################

Please discuss this release on the samba-technical mailing list or by
joining the #samba-technical IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

If you do report problems then please try to send high quality
feedback. If you don't provide vital information to help us track down
the problem then you will probably be ignored.  All bug reports should
be filed under the Samba 4.0 product in the project's Bugzilla
database (https://bugzilla.samba.org/).


======================================================================
== Our Code, Our Bugs, Our Responsibility.
== The Samba Team
======================================================================


Download Details
================

The release tarball is available from the following location:
 * http://download.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba4/samba-4.0.0alpha21.tar.gz

This release has been signed using GPG with Andrew's GPG key 28B436BB).

 * http://download.samba.org/samba/ftp/samba4/samba-4.0.0alpha21.tar.asc

To verify that the signature is correct, make sure that the tarball has
been unzipped and run:

$ gpg --verify samba-4.0.0alpha21.tar.asc

Happy testing!

The Samba team
-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org

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