Slashdot Mirror


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."

18 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Active Directory by isam_b · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

    1. Re:Active Directory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Having the Active Directory support is really a bug feature

      Now, was this a Freudian slip or what...

      Anonymous Cowards Unite

  2. Damn it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just when I perfected the old samba, they release a new version. Now I have to learn all those dance steps again.

    Shit.

  3. Another bonus by cleverhandle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...besides the features is some absolutely outstanding documentation. The old 2.x docs were basically a really long HOWTO. The new docs are broken into self-contained chapters that start by laying out how a certain task or protocol work in general, and then how to configure Samba to take part in it. Considering that Samba can perform so many different roles, the mix-and-match method is a lot more sensible. Even if you don't use Samba, consider their docs as a reference for troubleshooting Windows problems - I've found they offer a far more complete and focussed discussion of Windows technologies for the sysadmin than any MS book or webpage.

    Great job, Samba team!

  4. Re:additional new feature by yvesbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 /dev/null
  5. Under debian by MC68040 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. AD Controller Not Yet Suported by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Just as an FYI,

    From the 3.0 FAQ

    The following functionalities are NOT provided by Samba-3:

    *

    SAM replication with Windows NT4 Domain Controllers (i.e. a Samba PDC and a Windows NT BDC or vice versa)
    *

    Acting as a Windows 2000 Domain Controller (i.e. Kerberos and Active Directory) - In point of fact, Samba-3 DOES have some Active Directory Domain Control ability that is at this time purely experimental AND that is certain to change as it becomes a fully supported feature some time during the Samba-3 (or later) life cycle.


    The samba team is doing a great job moving forward. What I would hope to also see in the near future is support for creating a (Linux) directory heirachy based network using samba that will allow both MS and non MS clients. It would be nice to be able to create an LDAP directory trust relationship to your friends/family/etc.. network to allow logins between them...
    1. Re:AD Controller Not Yet Suported by cleverhandle · · Score: 5, Informative

      "What I would hope to also see in the near future is support for creating a (Linux) directory heirachy based network using samba that will allow both MS and non MS clients."

      Once they have AD controller support, that part is easy - and also not exactly Samba's job. Just create appropriate schemas for your LDAP server and have a Samba AD controller authenticate client requests via LDAP. What's not there yet is the ability to handle MS Kerberos properly - creating the Kerberos tokens in the proper format and passing them off to the client is more of a barrier than any LDAP protocol issue.

  7. Re:Lucky Linux users by sonicattack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Cool feature that is easy to miss by Gerdts · · Score: 5, Informative
    As I was reading the announcement, I missed item 42 (Added win2k3 shadow copy operations to VFS interface). Taking a look at the discussion on the samba-technical list, this seems like it is a very cool feature. It paves the way for being able to look at snapshot file systems (Veritas, UFS, LVM, etc.) and even creating a VFS interface that will allow you to browse the last 64 revisions of file a CVS repository. Very cool.

    Now, I would just love to see this in smbfs.

  9. Re:Samba wha?.... by sg_oneill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  10. Re:I'd like to be enthusiastic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  11. Re:Lucky Linux users by cleverhandle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:additional new feature by bogie · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gee and this is from and AC with no proof or benchmarks. Well that settles it, Samba RC3 is officially "broken and horribly slow."

    Glad this was modded up to +5 Informative so we all know to never use Samba 3.x. :rolleyes:

    --
    If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
  13. Re:Watch the free coders out code MS when... by afidel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually it's funny but the guys on the SAMBA team know more about the SMB protocol than anyone currently working for MS. I remember reading a tech conference note from one of the team members back before 2.0 went final and he had talked to one of the senior design guys from MS and the guy couldn't answer some questions about the reasoning behind the design of certain parts of SMB, he had simply inherited the codebase and designed extensions to it to do the new things for windows 2000, he knew very little about the history or design behind the overall protocol framework. Don't attribute to mallice what can be more easily explained by ignorance =)

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  14. Re:Samba wha?.... by Kunta+Kinte · · Score: 5, Informative
    No. How much security does NFS have built-in? Exactly none

    Care to back that up?

    NFS protocol has built in encryption/authentication using GSS-API since version 3. That was quite a few years ago. NFS version 4 is out.

    I maintained a lab running on an encrypted NFS FS about 3 years ago, on Solaris 7.

    Linux didn't have support for encrypted NFS because the kernel hackers couldn't get encryption into the kernel at the time. Now that 2.6 has kernel encryption services Linux will support the full NFSv4 spec. Or at least support the security features.

    But you can't blame the engineers that developed NFS, they've had encryption/authentication built into the protocol for years now.

    --
    Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
  15. Re:Lucky Linux users by marko123 · · Score: 5, Funny

    In the spirit of GNU/Linux, I think GINA should be prefixed with the initials of the state where the lead developer originated... Virginia.
    (For non-US, that would be VA)

    --
    http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
  16. The Samba Docs by Kris+Magnusson · · Score: 5, Funny

    My friend, John Terpstra, wrote those docs. Way to go, John! Your long hours paid off with a compliment on Slashdot! Your life is redeemed! ................ kris

    --
    "I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."