[Samba] Choosing a samba version for DC use

[Rowland Penny]

On Fri, 2 Dec 2016 09:33:31 +0000
Brian Candler via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:

> Do people have any recommendations on which Samba version to choose
> for production use, as a domain controller and authentication
> database for 802.1x only? (i.e. no file sharing)
> 
> I note that:
> 
> * CentOS 7 comes with samba 4.2.10 - labelled as "do not use" on 
> https://www.samba.org/samba/history/ !!

I said this was stupid at the time, the Samba version of 4.2.10
included a regression, this was fixed in 4.2.11, only problem was that
the distros folded the regression fix into 4.2.10 and released this
version, even though it was actually 4.2.11. 
Do not use the 4.2.10 tarball available from Samba, but you can use
the distro 4.2.10 packages.
 
> 
> * Ubuntu 16.04 comes with samba 4.3.11  (although 4.3.12 exists)
> 
> The Ubuntu/4.3.11 option would be my default choice - but are there
> any compelling reasons for going with 4.4.x or 4.5.x from the start? 
> Presumably that would require compiling Samba from source?
> 

It all depends on what you mean by 'compelling' ;-)
If you want a package you can just install, then go with a distro
package, but if you want to get the latest stable version of Samba with
all the updates, fixes etc, then compile it yourself.

Rowland