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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."
Came across this (short but interesting) interview with Jeremy Allison, one of the project's lead developers, where he talks about Samba 4:
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:-)
http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/modules.php?op=modlo
Any software that has a 'Susan Stage' has got to be cool
Smooth or Crunchy?
Moderation in All Things... Especially Moderation - gurutc
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!
Debian allready has packages.
/etc/apt/sources.list first.
Install them by running:
aptitude install -t experimental samba
But you'll need to add an entry for experimental to
If you don't know how to, you shouldn't be messing with experimental software anyway.
There has been info about Samba 4 for some time. Andrew Bartlett wrote a year ago an interesting thesis about Samba 4 and Active Directory (PDF).
But the release of this TP is good news, I hope that the use of Microsoft's Active Directory as an authentication service for Linux systems is coming to an end. All what we need now is a nice GUI.
-= If you fight Dragons long enough, you will become a Dragon =-
Since discovering the joys of NFS I've not looked back (yes I do know what samba is and I run a samba server). Compared to Samba, NFS is almost too simple and reliable. Give me my complixity and unreliablity back!
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Actually, windows copied in 2000 what was available in other environments for many years. AD is the bastard son of ldap+kerberos+smb.
What took years is reverse-engineering all the weird quirks MS introduced in the previously standard systems.
Besides, Samba can do a lot nifty things AD can't, so who's behind?
Ciao, Renato
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.
'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.'
Wow, it only took 25 days for Samba to break its New Year's resolution to eat less and lose weight.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Linux.conf.au conference in New Zealand
What the ... HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD!
Since when did anything .au become New Zealands responsibility? Usually its the other way around! I.e blaming the existance of Russle Crow on Australians. This wasnt our fault HE WAS BORN IN NZ! Now they NZ is stealing our conferences. I for one find this an outrage!
Um, no. LDAP and Kerberos weren't invented by Microsoft. They put the two together and called it Active Directory, straying away from the RFCs and throwing in all manner of tweaks that required extensive reverse engineering on the part of the Samba team to figure out. That means figuring out the protocol from the packets, which is an incredible feat, especially as Microsoft's protocol designs aren't easily discerned and contain all sorts of weird gotchas (purposefully).
There's a lot of complexity under that GUI of yours and, whether you want to believe it or not, Microsoft isn't such an innovative organization. Generally, they poach something that's already widely available and tweak it so it won't be interoperable with other systems. If you call that innovation, then I guess that speaks for itself.
There's virtually no innovation in anything - we're all "standing on the shoulders of giants".
You know, the big problem is, that the PHBs that are sitting at the head of big corps around have never heard of NFS. They've only seen the niiiiiice Shiiiiiinny PowerPoint presentation in Microsoft booths in big expos. And then, they have made their company to pay a lot for an over-priced non-standart Microsoft LDAP/Kerberos/SMB bastard (a.k.a. Active Domain) and are now knee deep into a locked-in solution from which there's no other out except paying an even higher price for the next even worse microsoft product.
This is the crowd that is targeted by Samba 4 :
- those who are SMB/CIFS dependant beyond repair, but need an alternate and opensource solution to Microsoft.
Of course, for the other guys out there, who can see differences between a real OS and a nice promises in a PowerPoint, there are other protocols to start with (like NFS).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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?
This all sounds great, but will it work when(if) Vista comes out? Previously, I had samba setups running beautifully on Win2K networks. Then 2003 came out and it messed it all up. Eventually Samba (and supporting docs) caught up and 2003 now works reasonably well. So will Samba 4 come out with great support for 2003 then break as soon as Vista is released?
Lets be clear on this point -
When vista comes out, samba will not break.
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.
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
On my home network, I have been using Samba as an internal network file system for Linux to Linux networking. I use LDAP as my Database backend, Kerberos as my means of authentication too Samba.
You see I discovered something about Windows and SMB. Windows Cached its passwords. The passwords were replayed across the network whenever a new socket was opened. Konqueror would not replicate this behavior unless forced to by the KDE Control center. I have a big long thing that describes the whole thing.
It is not totally perfect but I want you to tell me if you think that
this constitutes Active Directory, or at least something close.
Eitherway, This is a major accomplishment for me, and I wanted some
suggestions or potential improvements because I know this isn't perfect
but it is a noticable advancement.
Abstract
The general idea is that we have a single unifying database system
(LDAP) a single protocol for Sign-On (Kerberos) Name resolution (Bind
DNS) And a network File system (CIFS by care of Samba.)
Basically, Kerberos now acts as a single sign-on (SSO) facility for my
home network.
When you log in Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) verify the
account's credibility via LDAP, and request a ticket from the Kerberos
Key Distribution Center. based on the Principal (Username and Password)
and Policies in the Kerberos Realm.
These are DNS Service records thaat help clients find their KDC without the need for client side configuration files. This is how clients detect servers without Broadcast discovery protocols like Netbios Message Block,. The reason this is important is because it elimanates the "replay" attack threat from the fact that Windows likes to Cache its passwords in SAM files (PWL Files in the 9x Series). Even without the User's knowlege.
Some things I want to draw attention to.
First, this is a Windows 2000 Style Port 445 CIFS (SMBX) connection between two Linux machines. NOT a port 139 NT4 Netbios Session (SMB) connection.
The second thing I want you to notice is the fact that both servers are doing SPENGO, also known as "Sign and Seal" In Windows 2003 Server.
Finally that it aquaired the valid Kerberos Principal and ticket, and did a valid Kerberos setup.
Sorry if I sound incoherent. I'm tired.
Well, actually Microsoft faced a difficult challenge when they decided to go with Kerberos. The NT security model wasn't a very good fit, but they were committed to it by years of investment and dependent design decisions, not to mention a huge installed base. They had to find a way to paste SIDs onto Kerberos. It was a long time before the rest of us got an unencumbered look at the TDATA that they worked out to do this, but once the format was known working with it should not be that complicated.
In terms of volume of proprietary information to work out, the plethora of interlocking directory object types that an ADS client depends on has got to be the big challenge. The static characteristics of these objects and their attributes are documented (I use the term loosely) in the PSDK, but how they are used or even what some values mean is not at all clear. Throw in a few obvious copy/paste errors in the doco. to cloud the issue further and it's not surprising that Samba took this long. Create a new ADS forest and look at all the stuff that was put into it out of nowhere.
This is going to be fantastic for consultants when Win2K Server support ends.
... shut down the Windows PDC and then logged into the domain with an XP client using the new Samba 4 server as the PDC."
Many companies are not going to want something that isn't supported and will be looking where they should transition. Savvy consultants can propose a migration to Samba which could provide higher margins than reselling Microsoft solutions -- especially if they aren't a close partner of Microsoft -- and they will be able to fix problems and customize the solution themselves without having to point fingers (they still can, they just don't have to).
This quote from the article gets me all warm and tingly inside:
"Tridge demonstrated sucking the life out a Windows 2003 PDC [primary domain controller] in one click, importing all its user and machine information using SWAT."
"He then restarted [domain server] BIND on his Samba 4 server, changed the server role to PDC
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies