[Samba] Raising Functional Level

[Matthias Kühne | Ellerhold Aktiengesellschaft]

Hello,

on http://samba.bigbird.es/doku.php?id=samba:upgrade-fl-2016 it says 
"Once the functional level is raised, *older Windows clients* or *older 
Samba DCs* that do not support this level may not work correctly.".

This is an inofficial documentation, I know.

But on 
https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/current/man-html/smb.conf.5.html#ADDCFUNCTIONALLEVEL 
it says

"Normally this option should not be set as Samba will operate per the 
released functionality of the Samba Active Directory Domain Controller."

This seems to be warning people of messing with this setting at all too.

Does anybody have any (negative?) feedback after raising the level?

Thanks!

Am 24.10.25 um 11:36 schrieb Rowland Penny via samba:
> On Fri, 24 Oct 2025 11:17:22 +0200
> Matthias Kühne | Ellerhold Aktiengesellschaft via samba
> <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Ive read a few this about the functional level but Im not sure if
>> this is something we want to do.
>>
>> What are the benefits of raising the level?
> There are multiple benefits, for instance, you gain access to things
> that require the later schema.
>
>> Will Samba do that by itself during an upgrade process or is this a
>> pure admin-controlled upgrade?
> No, this is purely an admin controlled process, you have to add a line
> to every DCs smb.conf file and run a command on one.
>
>> Will it be mandatory to upgrade for a future version of samba?
> It isn't mandatory at present, but who knows what will happen in the
> future ?
>
>> It says "older clients that dont support the new level will break".
>> Are these just older Windows machine or does anybody know if other
>> clients (Mailserver, MacOS, ...) are breaking too?
> I doubt it refers to anything but old Windows clients, but I am unsure
> because I cannot find that statement, can you provide a link ?
>
> Rowland
>
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