[Samba] Raising Functional Level

[Rowland Penny]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2025 11:59:20 +0200
Matthias Kühne | Ellerhold Aktiengesellschaft via samba
<samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:

> 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.
> 

No, what it is saying is that you do not need to set this if Samba is
working correctly and you do not require anything that raising the
functional level will give you. However, if you do need something like
Authentication Policies, then you need to set it and raise the
functional level. I personally can see no reason not to raise the
functional level.

Rowland