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."

Comments

Just Work (TM)

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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.

But as an Active Directory replacement?

[Money for Nothin']

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)?

For all MSFT's faults (and there are many, as /. routinely points out), AD *is* a decent NOS directory...

Re:Jeremy Allison on Samba 4

[Chemicalscum]

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.