[Samba] Samba 4 and OpenLDAP (and other LDAP servers)

[Alex Crow]

All, devels,

I would like to put in a request the those working on Samba 4 - at our
company, we already have a significant investment in Samba 3 and
OpenLDAP - LDAP is our primary authentication backend, controls access
and configuration of our email infrastructure, and we have written many
scripts and web applications that use OpenLDAP, not least of which is an
automated user account request (by HR) approval and creation system (by
IT). We have even applied for our own unique OID to add our own schemas
to the LDAP namespace.

It would be rather frustrating if we were to have to give this up to
support the many wonderful things that Samba 4 will bring, most
important of which for us would be fully integrated Kerberos and Group
Policy objects. I have seen on the roadmap that it is being considered
to provide support for external LDAP servers in 4; I'd urge that it is
an absolute necessity, not only for OpenLDAP users, but for those using
products from Novell, Sun, Netscape etc in a current production
environment.

I also realise there is another approach, ie that of using delegation to
other LDAP servers, but I'd love to know what the current state of
thinking is for v4.

Cheers

Alex