[Samba] samba debian & ubuntu builds

[Arnaud FLORENT]

Hi Michael


For us, we now update to 4.18 so we do not need 4.16 series anymore


I understand you want to remove older release, but i think you should 
always keep published releases available even if they are outdated.


Some config are sometimes not always compatible with next samba release 
and it can take some times to fix.

For exemple, we recently have to deal with %I variable not set in root 
preexec script.


Additionally, if someone needs to reinstall a 20.04 server for example, 
he may need to be able to reinstall 4.16 4.17 or 4.18.


ubuntu 20.04 is old but it is a LTS version, so event if you can not 
build 4.19 and up, admins may need to install latest samba release 
available.

Ubuntu LTS is maintained for 10 years total: 5 years of standard support 
+ 5 years of ESM

so you should at least not remove ubuntu/ debian release before...


once again thank you very much for your work, it really helps us.



Le 10/05/2024 à 13:00, Michael Tokarev via samba a écrit :

> Hi!
>
> After providing samba builds for several debian and ubuntu releases 
> for over 1.5 years,
> I see this service is quite popular still.
>
> However, I'd love to understand how useful it is still, and which 
> releases should be
> provided in the future.
>
> For example, samba 4.16.x series is end-of-life, there has been no 
> updates for it for
> quite some time and none planned, either.  Yet people do have it in 
> their sources.list
> still, and the package list is being queried on regular basis, getting 
> the same list
> each time obviously.  I removed this release from my repository some 
> time ago and
> someone asked on the list for it the next day.  But I think this 
> becomes a mis-service, -
> when people see the repository for 4.16 is up and running, they think 
> this release is
> supported and will receive updates and fixes (or else there would be 
> no need to query
> the updated list of packages), while this is not the case anymore.
>
> So, I think I'll remove at least 4.16 packages (for all 
> distributions), and 4.17 too
> (due to the same reason).
>
> Now, Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa and Debian 10 Buster are old too. Samba 
> 4.19 and up
> can't be built for these easily anymore (required dependencies are 
> missing).  So we
> do have 4.18 packages for these distributions still (after removing 
> 4.16 and 4.17), -
> maybe I'll keep this for a while, but their days are numbered anyway.
>
> On the plus side, I added Ubuntu 24.04 Noble Numbat to the list of 
> distributions, -
> this only have samba 4.20.x since it ships 4.19 out of the box 
> already, and hopefully
> will keep it updated in the future (if not, it's not a big deal to add 
> 4.19 too, as
> long as it is supported still).  Dunno yet if these will be useful.  
> Also, I haven't
> looked at further changes made to samba by ubuntu for 24.04, - I 
> haven't heard
> anything from them at all, so don't know what they're doing.
>
> This is JFYI, and please watch out which parts of the repository 
> you're using and
> why.  I still see some access URLs which were used at the very first 
> test of this
> repository (for a week or so in autumn of 2022), - I renamed the paths 
> within to
> simplify things, but quite some people still request old URLs every 
> day 1.5 years
> later, apparently not caring at all what their systems are doing...
>
> Thanks,
>
> /mjt

-- 
Arnaud FLORENT
IRIS Technologies