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Samba 3.0.0RC1 Released
dook43 writes "Samba 3.0.0 RC1 has been released as of 8/16. Probably the most important new feature is its Active Directory support, but the rest of the new features can be found at the website."
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Having the Active Directory support is really a bug feature, as I had real big problems with authenticating a Linux Client in an AD server .. I hope that this issue will be solved in Samba 3 ..
Way to Go Samba!
I've been checking out a win2003 AD install for a client lately. A fairly fast workstation(2.4ghz) The creating of SID's thingy is soooo slow. My feeling is that the whole Active Directory is not mature yet.
my social life is pretty much in
I've installed the "unstable" samba 3.0RC1 packages under my Debian 2.4.20 system and I have to say, it works pretty well.
I've only experienced a few cases of "lock outs" of all clients, the first time because the init script didden't sucessfully kill all smbd's before starting new ones and the second time... Who knows, a restart of it helped fine anyway.
Other than that it seems pretty good for me with W98/W2K/XP Pro clients using different laguages, except for some random slowdowns in access to it but nothing major.
Also, that build is compiled with GCC-3.3 if anyone's interested in that.
My brain doesn't have the neural paths to understand some unix documentation, including samba, many man pages, etc. They seem to be produced from the old IBM school that says that the documentation should be for people that already is expert on the topic.
And don't forget all those switchs that are platform dependent, remember the source code is the documentation.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
Since some versions of Windows acting as an SMB server actually limit the number of allowed connections (that's Microsoft's Licensing for you), a Windows port of Samba actually wouldn't be that crazy of an idea for certain configurations.
Depends on the team. What some people release as "just an RC" others release as final and still others hold back as alpha or beta. Saying "release candidates are always garbage" takes nothing into account wrt the release management style of the programming team in question.
Now, if you had something to say about the quality of the Samba team's RC releases in particular, that'd be worthwhile -- but given how long the Samba 3 *betas* (not RCs, mind you, betas) have been stable, I doubt you'd be saying much the same thing.
...MS agrees with agrees with everyone else in a public forum on a standard before implementation. Until then, we're reverse engineering and always behind the curve - by design.
Except there are many situations where it is impossible for everyone to just go ahead and install linux. I'm all for running linux, but in the "real world" people still run windows. If I can install a linux server running headless in the corner of a small office handling all of the file sharing/printing needs of that office, I'm happy. Programs like samba are important to show people that linux is a good operating system to use, even if it is just serving files.
Doesn't the creation of Linux tools for interfacing with Windows just further validate a needlessly Microsoftian System?
You don't have to install it Richard. For those of us with jobs to do however, this is a big step forward.
NFS is fine and all, but its limited to really unixy networking.
That said Active directory actively puzzles me (as does LDAP). I guess its back to the books again. I guess my windoze knowledge never did advance much beyond NT4.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
On a small scale, it seems that such crossover projects hurt Linux. On a large scale, however, the picture is quite different.
Anyone who has administered large numbers of computers knows that sweeping changes are nearly impossible to execute. This is not due to technological restrictions, but rather those of the social variety: people don't like change, and require help in adapting. They need a period of migration.
If there is no way to migrate, large scale deployments of Linux will be avoided-- it simply costs too much to change things without a smooth transition.
For this reason, Samba does not hurt Linux. It should certainly be noted also that Samba actually does alot of Windows networking things faster than Windows it self-- there are benchmarks kicking around to this effect.
So not only does Samba allow easy migration, but it allows interoperability between platforms and a superior solution to existing applications.
~geogeek
I think you're trolling, but I'll answer anyway. First of all, Active Directory is a Microsoft-specific directory services protocol, it's not an open specification that the Samba folks can go and download and implement. If it weren't for the Samba people, your only option would have been to purchase Windows 2000/03 Server for Active Directory support.
Furthermore, you've clearly never reverse-engineered a protocol before. Since Microsoft doesn't release specifications for Active Directory interactions, the Samba team has to pretty much capture thousands of packets as a workstation logs in, then logs out, then logs in, then logs out, etc. and stare at the data for weeks or months to figure out how to emulate the AD logon. And then they have to do this for domain discovery, resource sharing, and all the other operations that AD supports. To do this for an entire suite of functionality can take years.
Frankly, I'm surprised and pleased that they've managed to build the excellent support they have for MS' network protocols, and I think the Samba team deserves some congratulations. Thanks and keep up the good work!
One of the steps towards linux-only is getting the servers on linux. Linux servers are becoming very popular, but that doesn't mean that every place has them yet, let alone linux workstations.
Many IT departments have already replaced some (or all) windows servers with linux servers, running Samba to provide the same services to their workstations. If Samba didn't exist, they wouldn't be switching their servers to it, since it would be incompatible with their existing windows servers. Nobody is going to upgrade if it means they lose features (namely, all the features samba provides).
There is just beginning to be a move towards linux on the desktop, and there have been a few articles on /. about it recently. My personal view is that it's not quite there yet, but close. I just work at a small company, but likely within a year I will have linux on the desktops. Some companies are beginning to roll out linux workstations, but not that many. And certainly not many enterprises.
You even say it yourself:
I've already gone 100% Linux on any networks I can.
Why not all of them? Without samba, it would basically be either 100% linux networks, or 0% linux networks. At the most, linux would be limited to being a router, NAS, webserver, etc.. which isn't bad, but it's leaving a monopoly on a fairly critical service (authentication) to one platform.
Speak before you think
I personally don't think it's flamebait, it's a valid comment. But just misinformed and poorly approached. The fact he has his signature in the comment and not as a specific signature (which I have turned off) does increase his newbie rating, but whatever.
Samba isn't just Linux, I run Samba on a Solaris box. Unfortunately, at this point in time, you still need Samba and Microsoft, but as Tridge has said, in 20 years time, people will still be using Rsync, but Samba will have been forgotten.
pGina does essentially what you describe. It replace GINA and allows MS boxes to authenticate directly against an LDAPv3 server. But people who understand this stuff much better than myself tell me that this is not really a great solution. GINA is a fairly superficial authentication component, and replacing it doesn't make some of the more subtle bits fit together. Modifying the LSA (Local Security Authority) would be necessary to do the job properly. But, not surprisingly, documentation for it is not forthcoming.
I know that GimpPrint will make it into Panther, but I think it would be great if some version of Samba 3.0 could make its way into Mac OS X 10.3. The best reason being that Samba 3.0 is supposed to support the signed transmission security that Windows Server 2003 implements. Rock on!
Samba isn't about creating a new 'innovative' network file system - it's about a tool for interoperating with the widest spread legacy protocol out there. And if you have noticed, MS isn't exactly keen on adopting any of the innovative open source ones like OpenAFS or CODA etc.
There are plenty of innovative open source protcols out there, but how do you expect them to be adopted when just about everybody else (ie MS) won't use them? And in the meantime you'd deny the usefulness of Samba?
It's a chicken and egg situation, and Samba breaks that. Samba allows Unix/Linux/*BSD to interoperate with Windows networks. Then once open source stuff is installed widely, then you can start using other open standards.
Dude, you're full of crap. Kerberos is the easiest part. LDAP is actually the hardest part so far. We just got support for GSS-SPNEGO (Window's preferred SASL authentication mechanism) this week (thanks to some awesome work by Volker). Then there's a bunch of AD-only controls and syntaxes that we're just begining to understand. True is, we can currently support an AD domain controller but it's buggy as all hell (mostly due to LDAP problems). That's not even getting into connectionless LDAP (see my latest presentation at last week's CIFS conference). - Anthony Liguori
Why, oh why chunk everything into one huge and fumbly command? I find "net ???" on Windows to be a pain in the arse to use and usually end up going through several 'net help blah' sessions when looking for how to do something.
Keep smbpasswd separate. You can still chunk it by prefixing smb-related commands with "smb" (hit [tab] to see the list of commands and start with smb). Not good, or what? I think it's fine.
Doesn't the creation of Linux tools for interfacing with Windows just further validate a needlessly Microsoftian System?
No, this is exactly what is needed to displace Mictosoft. Other than email, the second biggest use by client computers of a server is for file-serving. No matter how good Linux is, Microsoft has an iron-clad hold on that area for Windows clients, because users can browse and print through the interface they know so well. If that can be subbed out in a way invisible to the user, the reason for having Windows servers gets a great deal weaker. Breaking Microsoft's server hold is critical - if they can't control the protocols that they talk to the client in, then they cannot create propietary standards on the client, which eventually allows real competition.
think about it...what is the primary reason to run samba?
give up? it's integration in to a Windows network. there are other network share protocols that work on basically every other OS, and would be the first choice for networks containing only those OSes (i.e. NFS for *nix nets, Appleshare for Mac nets)
Most people who run samba will simply be wanting to access the data the same way they would on their windows box. using the same commands will make it simpler on them.
Usually when the subject of windows imitation is brought up, I don't like it, but this is one situation where it is very useful.
Lets say you have a WinXP box that you need to get a PDF off of and on to a few of your systems. Which is easier:
1.
Go to Win2k box, run "net use * \\WinXPBox\C$"
Go to Linux box, run "smbmount blah blah..." (sorry i havent used smbmount in forever)
Go to OS X box, mount it however that does it
or
2.
On all boxen, run "net use [chosen mount point] \\WinXPBox\C$"
obviously using the same command everywhere simplifies things.
Windows did SMB first, and the point of SAMBA is to duplicate the SMB services that Windows offers, so logically unless Microsoft did something so horribly wrong that most users would prefer doing things a different way, make the command identical.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
> when a Windows server can be had that can do it out of the
... They don't even ship with Perl, for crying
...).
> box with very little administration
That would represent a very radical change in Microsoft policy.
Don't get me wrong, NT has some things going for it, but "doing
it all out of the box" isn't one of them. All that stuff is
*available*, of course, and once you install it you have a
pretty decent system, but it's not included OOTB. The reason
for this goes directly back to Microsoft policy: the OOTB system
is a base platform with basic functionality, suitable for the
majority of users who have simple expectations. The minority
who need features can obtain them separately. (Time was when
they obtained them separately from third-party software vendors.
These days with a few exceptions it's mostly either direct from
MS or ports of OSS stuff free from the net. But the principle
is the same.)
Out of the box, Windows systems are junk. You have to download
and install a couple of gigabytes of software to make a Windows
system useful. They don't ship with Apache, or a decent Java
vm, no python, no decent command shell, no decent text editor,
no secure shell server (critical for most servers, especially
headless servers),
out loud. *Every* OS ships with Perl -- well, pretty much every
non-handheld OS that matters, except Windows and VMS.
After you download and install a couple of gigs of software,
then your Windows system starts to become useful.
Most Linux distros have the reverse problem -- three or four
competing implementations of almost everything, with notable
singleton exceptions like (oooh, back to topic) Samba, and
ten or twelve competing implementations of some things, even
more of certain key things (shells, window managers,
Samba IMO could use a competitor (that runs on something besides
Windows). Just one competitor, though, not four or five or six.
Preferably one written in a VHLL, and written in a more modular
and flexible fashion so it can do things like support for multiple
network/transport layers for compatibility with systems that are
configured not to route NetBIOS over TCP/IP.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Not the same AC.
I find it curious that people attach more "truth" to a posting by someone with an account. It costs nothing to make an account, and you can create as many as you need, why does the use of an AC account warrant scorn in many eyes?
I've been reading slashdot for several years, don't troll, I've even had several +5 informative/interesting all while posting AC.
Shouldn't the posting be judged on the words, not on the poster and/or usage of AC?
NB: Not aimed at anyone, just a general question.
Samba 3.0 is the first real samba (excluding samba-tng), imho, that can replace a WinNT4 PDC (Primary Domain Controller) *fully*.
(eg: with samba3, the windows usrmgr.exe works for adding/deleting users & groups. (usrmgr.exe communicates over RPC, so I consider it something that should work for a windows primary domain controller). I have just recently setup for a company:
A samba PDC, with usrmgr.exe working.
With an LDAP backend for authenciation.
With posix ACLs on the file system (to allow *real* permission settings. The perms are still a bit wierd, and I feel better setting them in Linux rather than through the windows gui, but they do work).
With cups printer backend, so printing works great.
Basically, this machine fully replaces their windows NT4 server, and does it pretty damn well.
The move from NT4 to PDC was pretty good. Once everything is setup on the samba side, you can "net vampire" all of the user and group accounts over to the samba server, and the users can login with no problems.
The only missing feature was I needed some way to copy the file system on the NT box to the linux box and keep the ACLs.
Anyway, the samba team does a great job
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.