[Samba] Updating Samba AD from 4.1 to latest stable

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Fri, 2020-06-05 at 10:35 +0200, Joop via samba wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> After reading the list for a while I have a question myself.
> I have the task of upgrading a couple of systems and one of them is
> the
> office AD infrastructure from a Samba-4.1 installation to the latest
> stable version.
> I already did a concept of proof by incrementally compiling versions
> 4.2/3/4/5/etc to the then latest stable 4.10 and it seemed to work
> out
> OK but was a lot of work.
> I had a thought and would like to hear your opinions on it.
> What if I install a temporary Windows 2019/2016 server with the AD
> role
> and join it to the old Samba-4.1 AD and then transfer all AD roles to
> it. Next install a new Linux server with the latest Samba (4.12.3)
> and
> join it to the domain too. Transfer all roles from the Windows ADDC
> to
> it and decommission that server and add a second Linux ADDC  to the
> domain to be redundant.
> Would/should that work and am I missing steps?

It would be even less likely to work then upgrading Samba in-place.

I think you have done it the right way.  If upgrading in-place you
should be able to just go up to 4.10 (we do some tests of that in our
selftest, but not as far back as 4.1), but if upgrading over DRS you
have to go via smaller steps - I think Samba 4.4 and hope you get to
4.5 before upgrading further.

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