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Samba 4 Technology Preview Released
daria42 writes "Samba creator Andrew Tridgell has officially released a technology preview of Samba 4 at the Linux.conf.au conference in New Zealand, ending a three-year wait for users. But wait before upgrading those servers. 'It may eat your cat,' says the Samba team in a statement, 'but is far more likely to choose to munch on your password database.'" From the article: "'Samba 4 supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon environment used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain join and domain logon operations with these clients,' the group said in a statement on its Web site, noting this feature was 'the main emphasis' for the new software."
But can I make an anonymous read/write share without performing invasive surery on config files. And can I then easily mount that share?
Samba is great as a home network share, but it's not a single click system. Security on a home netowrk doesn't really interest me. I'd like to be able to "just share" the files without setting up users etc, etc.
May the Maths Be with you!
So, in 2006, Samba is finally able to do what windows was able in 2000?
Five years to reverse engineer a difficult, obfuscated protocol is quite frankly amazing.
And you see - they don't really have to offer full compatability immediately - but if they do it before win2k ends its lifecycle, SAMBA + *nix offers companies dependant on AD a way out without having to go the win2k3 route.
Way to innovate, OSS community!
Way to troll dJOEK!
There is virtually no innovation in software, proprietary or OSS - everyone is just copying everyone elses ideas & making incremental improvements...
I mean we're all using the same desktop paradigm from 30 years ago - and the only substatial innovation I've seen in that is overlapping windows (from maybe 25 years ago)
My pics.
There's virtually no innovation in anything - we're all "standing on the shoulders of giants".
Can it do authorization of group access to a given application? How about publishing network resources (printers, workstations, etc.)? Can Samba 4 replicate its data between multiple sites? Is Samba 4's AD functionality even built off any sort of LDAP technology to begin with (probably OpenLDAP, if anything)?
/. routinely points out), AD *is* a decent NOS directory...
For all MSFT's faults (and there are many, as
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
That doesn't help when the root user creates a user account with the correct UID and then logs in as that user, does it?
The genius of proprietary software: getting you to trade your sovreignty for code that does a lot of the less interesting stuff.
Unless you're actually selling that printer, are you going to want to spend all day writing a driver for it, much less testing it against a bazillion OS's?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Trivially easy?
Do you manage many Active Directory servers?
The ones I know about (in a EU wide bank) are a mess, and require an entire team of people just to let them run. And even so it is very simple to screw them up.
Not counting the fact that AD is horridly delicate: un-join a machine from the domain for long enough, and you are done.
AD is NOT easy. Clicking on "Share this folder" might look so, but managing AD is not.
Ciao, Renato
MS will simply have changed the standard/protocol/whatever in some way that thier own prior implementations will be tolerant of but Samba will not. Samba will not be busted, MS' own implementation of thier own technology (or other peoples tech, kerberos for example) is what will be busted.
And, practically, does this make a difference? Can I look my boss in the eye and tell him that the mail server doesn't know who it's users are, but it's ok because it's MS's fault?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Oh, come on: how many people, seriously, are going to write printer drivers?
Sure, there may be a generic project that dumps courier on paper, and mostly gets the margins right.
But the annoyance of getting it RIGHT across a variety of printers/operating systems could lead to madness
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Obviously there *are* people who want to spend all day writing drivers for hardware, otherwise we'd have no drivers. "Because I want to sell X" and "because I want to buy X" are equally valid reasons for wanting a driver for X to exist.
Lots of people are interested in writing printer drivers. Just look around linuxprinting.org Gimp-Print/Gutten-Print, the HP IJS drivers, people maintaining the Samsung "gdi" patches for various versions of Ghostscript etc. There are more people doing stuff like this than you imagine.
I'm personally hoping to find somone interested in re-writing the Samsung "gdi" Ghostscript driver as an IJS server.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
RMS started the Free Software Movement because he wanted to improve a printer driver for an early laser printer and they wouln't give him the source.
and on ethernet isn't stealing another machines ip pretty easy?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You're dreaming. I doubt there are [m]any Active Directory shops out there who "need an alternate and opensource solution to Microsoft". Those who implemented Active Directory generally did so because they're mostly a Windows shop. Got Windows on the desktop, might as well pay the relatively insignificant fee to use Windows Servers and the free LDAP directory that comes with it. Don't delude yourself, AD, especially 2003, is rock solid. And you get easy, intuitive interfaces and "it just works" setup for the clients. And a huge installbase worldwide from which to glean information out of. And a company to call if you have problems, for-fee or "included" in another agreement. Microsoft Premier is amazing.
Don't get me wrong, if I were to run IT for an up-and-coming small company without a huge Windows client base, I'd certainly love to give Linux et al a shot. I use Samba at home, as the go-between my hobby Linux box and Windows PC's. Just don't be under the impression that big Windows shops are itching to switch to Linux. Some individual techs might, but the corporation will stick with what works, the big name they see in the CIO magazines, the company they can send a check to and get some accountability from.