[Samba] Books of Samba 4

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Mon, 2014-03-03 at 11:33 -0800, Tony Hain wrote:
> Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> > > ...
> > 
> > If you install Samba per our HOWTOs, as an AD DC, it will very likely
> 'just
> > work'.  I know it is disconcerting to expect that given the unix history
> of 'here
> > is a bag of lego, now build a car', but really, we have built a product
> that does
> > for the most part and for almost those who deploy it in the recommended
> > configurations 'just work'.
> 
> I appreciate the amount of work that has gone into making that happen. The
> problem is that there are times when a DC is not the goal. If even a
> fraction of the time had gone into documenting and testing for making the
> Member Server work I could have saved several days. 
> 
> > > ...
> 
> > Sadly nobody I know with any experience in this area is writing anything.
> We
> > know the Samba-3 books are getting old, and we are looking at removing
> > them for this reason.
> 
> While that is true, there are people stuck on 3.x (lots of active
> discussions about dd-wrt/optware instances in other forums), so getting rid
> of documentation is not the right answer. All that will do is create
> confusion when new syntax and commands don't work on the old implementation.
> If there is no samba 4 book in the works, the wiki needs to be clear about
> the differences. 

Please register for a wiki account and join in the process of improving
our documentation.  

I do understand that there is a significant confusion in some minds
because for ages 'samba as an AD DC' was referred to as 'samba4',
whereas the actual release of Samba 4.0 was a merging of the AD effort
and the file server that was in the past known as Samba 3.x.  

The documentation written about Samba 3.x as a file server, and as a
'classic' domain controller continues to be valid, with small
exceptions, for Samba 4.x releases in those modes.

The reason we are looking to remove the Samba 3 HOWTO and the Samba 3 by
example books is that the HOWTO dates largely back over a decade, and
the By Example book has not been updated or maintained in any
substantial way for over 5 years.  Because of their age, both have
errors, some significant, that are not easily spotted, and while I did
my best to deal with the worse of it around the time of Samba 4.0,
without a significant effort, it is a lost cause. 

We instead invite others to follow the great example showed by the Samba
AD DC Howto, and to curate accurate and up to date HOWTO guides and
other documentation on our wiki.  By doing it on our wiki we hope to
keep it up to date and to be able to deal with inaccuracy more easily. 

Thanks,

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett
http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba