Where to for Samba4?

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> > As a mere administrator who humbly injects his opinion...
> > > Finally, I've heard all manner of different people give views in the
> > > press about where Samba4 is heading - a separate release, a DC only,
> > > just another head of a Samba3 borg?  
> > > From my point of view, I'm expecting to make a release, with good DC,
> > > and hopefully good file-server capabilities.  But I would like to
> > > discuss what (if anything) Samba4 means to more than just myself.
> > > Thoughts?
> > If I could create an AD domain with working group policies and OpenLDAP
> > integration, and continue to use Samba3 for file-services, printing,
> > etc... I'd be dancing in the street and passing out flowers to
> > strangers.  As would many of the IT people I know.
> The tricky part is the OpenLDAP integration - currently this only works
> if you take over the OpenLDAP server, replace the schema etc.  The real
> challenge will be mixing this with a 'normal' schema.  However, I do
> think this will be possible. 

Interesting.  Are you thinking this is possible by schema mapping in
something like back-meta, schema mapping using a specific overlay in the
DSA, or doing schema mapping in Samba?   (although I kind of suspected
having to replace the schema would be required,  it might be easier to
translate/map the AD schema back to a normal schema in some meta subtree
of the external DSA,  I've already got all the Samba & NSS specific
stuff all in its own subtree [ou=SAM,....]).   Mostly I want to keep
OpenLDAP because we have so many other services already configured to
use it, and some of its esoteric features; plus the performance is
blazing.

> The Group Policies stuff seems to work already (at least in some cases).
> But rather than the flowers, what I need is help.  The amount of useful
> work I've got done simply due to good, solid testing over the past few
> weeks surely proves that 'humble administrators' are just as valuable as
> coders. 

Understood,  my point was that the functionality that Samba doesn't have
seems paramount compared to duplicating the functionality that does
exist.  There is a pretty darn good file & print server - Samba 3.
Someone who's file & print server is also their DC should have their
hand slapped anyway.