[Announce] Samba 4.0.0rc1 Available for Download

Karolin Seeger kseeger at samba.org
Thu Sep 13 04:40:56 MDT 2012 

Release Announcements
---------------------

This is the first release candidate of Samba 4.0.0!  This is *not*
intended for production environments and is designed for testing
purposes only.  Please report any defects via the Samba bug reporting
system at https://bugzilla.samba.org/.


What's new in Samba 4.0.0rc1
=============================

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
========

Samba 4.0.0rc1 is not a final Samba release, however we are now making
good progress towards a Samba 4.0 release.

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'.

Samba 4.0 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 behaviour.
However, as with all our pre-releases we still recommend against
upgrading production servers from Samba 3.x release to Samba 4.0.0rc1
at this stage.

If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba 4.0.0
release candidates, you should backup all configuration and data.


UPGRADING
=========

Users upgrading from Samba 3.x domain controllers and wanting to use
Samba 4.0 as an AD DC should use the 'samba-tool domain
classicupgrade' command.  See the wiki for more details:
https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/samba3upgrade/HOWTO

Users upgrading from Samba 4.0 alpha and beta releases since alpha15
should run 'samba-tool dbcheck --cross-ncs --fix' before re-starting
Samba.  Users upgrading from earlier alpha releases should contact the
team for advice.

Users upgrading an AD DC from any previous release should run
'samba-tool ntacl sysvolreset' to re-sync ACLs on the sysvol share
with those matching the GPOs in LDAP and the defaults from an initial
provision.  This will set an underlying POSIX ACL if required (eg not
using the NTVFS file server).

If you used the BIND9_FLATFILE or BIND9_DLZ features,
you'll have to add '-dns' to the 'server services' option,
as the internal dns server (SAMBA_INTERNAL) is the default now.


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

Samba 4.0 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 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.

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.

For pure file server work, the binaries users would expect from that
series (nmbd, winbindd, smbpasswd) continue to be available.  When
running an AD DC, you only need to run 'samba' (not
nmbd/smbd/winbind), as the required services are co-coordinated by this
master binary.

As DNS is an integral part of Active Directory, we also provide two DNS
solutions, a simple internal DNS server for 'out of the box' configurations
and a more elaborate BIND plugin using the BIND DLZ mechanism in versions
9.8 and 9.9. During the provision, you can select which backend to use.
With the internal backend, your DNS server is good to go.
If you chose the BIND_DLZ backend, a configuration file will be generated
for bind to make it use this plugin, as well as a file explaining how to
set up bind.

To provide accurate timestamps to Windows clients, we integrate with
the NTP project to provide secured NTP replies.  To use you need to
start ntpd and configure it with the 'restrict ... ms-sntp' and
ntpsigndsocket options.

Finally, 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 beta8
===================

For a list of changes since beta8, please see the git log.

$ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git
$ cd samba.git
$ git log samba-4.0.0beta8..samba-4.0.0rc1

Some major user-visible changes include:

- The smbd file server now offers SMB3 as the maximum protocol
  by default. Samba can negotiate version 3 of the SMB protocol
  and supports the required features, including all required
  features of SMB 2.1 and SMB 2.0. Note that this does not imply
  that Samba implements all features of SMB3 since many of them
  are optional capabilities. Examples of features that Samba does
  not implement yet are leases (SMB 2.1) and multi-channel (SMB 3).

  Samba now offers an initial support for SMB2 durable file handles.
  These are enabled by default and can be turned off on a per share
  basis by setting "durable handles = no" on the share configuration.
  Note that in order to prevent conflicts with other applications
  accessing the same files, durable handles are only granted on
  shares that are configured for CIFS/SMB2-only access, i.e. more
  explicitly shares that are configured for minimal interoperability
  with these settings:

    kernel oplocks = no
    kernel share modes = no
    posix locking = no

  The option "kernel share modes" has been introduced to be able
  to turn the translation of SMB share modes into kernel flocks
  off.

- The 'provision' script was merged into 'samba-tool'
  as 'samba-tool domain provision' the arguments are still
  the same.

- The 'updateprovision' script was renamed to 'samba_upgradeprovision'.

- We changed the default dns implementation to the internal dns server
  (SAMBA_INTERNAL). BIND9_FLATFILE and BIND9_DLZ are still available,
  but you'll have to add '-dns' to the 'server services' option
  to disable the internal dns server.
  The default for 'allow dns updates' has changed to 'secure only'.


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

- 'samba-tool domain classicupgrade' will fail when setting ACLs on
  the GPO folders with NT_STATUS_INVALID_ONWER in the default
  configuration.  This happens if, as is typical a 'domain admins'
  group (-512) is mapped in the passdb backend being upgraded.  This
  is because the group mapping to a GID only prevents Samba from
  allocating a uid for that group.  The uid is needed so the 'domain
  admins' group can own the GPO file objects.

  To work around this issue, remove the 'domain admins' group before
  upgrade, as it will be re-created automatically.  You will
  of course need to fill in the group membership again.  A future release
  will make this automatic, or find some other workaround.

- This release makes the s3fs file server the default, as this is the
  file server combination we will use for the Samba 4.0 release.

- For similar reasons, sites with ACLs stored by the ntvfs file server
  may wish to continue to use that file server implementation, as a
  posix ACL will similarly not be set in this case.

- Replication of DNS data from one AD server to another may not work.
  The DNS data used by the internal DNS server and bind9_dlz is stored
  in an application partition in our directory.  The replication of
  this partition is not yet reliable.

- Replication may fail on FreeBSD due to getaddrinfo() rejecting names
  containing _.  A workaround will be in a future release.

- samba_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)
  available for the AD domain controller.  (Support in nmbd and smbd
  for classic domains and member/standalone servers is unchanged).

- 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 uncompressed tarballs and patch files have been signed
using GnuPG (ID 6568B7EA).  The source code can be downloaded
from:

        http://download.samba.org/samba/ftp/rc/

The release notes are available online at:

	http://www.samba.org/samba/ftp/rc/WHATSNEW-4-0-0rc1.txt

Binary packages will be made available on a volunteer basis from

        http://download.samba.org/samba/ftp/Binary_Packages/

Our Code, Our Bugs, Our Responsibility.
(https://bugzilla.samba.org/)

                        --Enjoy
                        The Samba Team

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