samba-mirror/WHATSNEW.txt

What's new in Samba 4 alpha19
=============================

Samba 4.0 will be the next version of the Samba suite and incorporates
all the technology found in both the Samba4 alpha series and the
stable 3.x series. The primary additional features over Samba 3.6 are
support for the Active Directory logon protocols used by Windows 2000
and above.

WARNINGS
========

Samba4 alpha19 is not a final Samba release, however we are now making
good progress towards a Samba 4.0 release, of which this is a preview.
Be aware the this release contains both the technology of Samba 3.6
(that you can reasonably expect to upgrade existing Samba 3.x releases
to) and the AD domain controller work previously known as 'samba4'.

While binaries for the stable file server are provided in this
release, for a stable, supported file server, Samba3 domain or AD
domain member installation, please run a Samba 3.x release, as we are
still bedding down the new single build system.

Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an automated
basis, we have found Samba 4.0 to be very stable in it's behavior.
However, we still recommend against upgrading production servers from
Samba 3.x release to Samba 4.0 alpha at this stage.

If you are upgrading, or looking to develop, test or deploy Samba 4.0
alpha releases, you should backup all configuration and data.

NEW FEATURES
============

Samba 4.0 alpha 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.

Our Domain Controller (DC) implementation includes our own built-in
LDAP server and Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) as well as the
Samba3-like logon services provided over CIFS.  We correctly generate
the infamous Kerberos PAC, and include it with the Kerberos tickets we
issue.

Samba 4.0 alpha ships with two distinct file servers.  The file server
from the Samba 3.x series is 'smbd', and works with the binaries users
would expect from that series (nmbd, winbindd, smbpasswd).

Samba 4.0 also ships with a new file server, which is tuned to match
the requirements of an AD domain controller.  Users should not use the
file server in the 'samba' binary for non-DC related tasks.

A new scripting interface has been added to Samba 4, allowing Python
programs to interface to Samba's internals, and many tools and
internal workings of the DC code is now implemented in python.


CHANGES SINCE alpha18
=====================

For a list of changes since alpha 18, please see the git log.

$ git clone git://git.samba.org/samba.git
$ cd samba.git
$ git log samba-4.0.0alpha18..samba-4.0.0alpha19

Some major user-visible changes include:

CVE-2012-1182:
   Samba 3.0.x to 3.6.3 are affected by a
   vulnerability that allows remote code
   execution as the "root" user.

Portability to MacOS X.  By using the CC_MD5*() routines we no longer
segfault on MacOS X.

The source4/librpc layer has been reworked to be much more robust to
connection failures.

security=share in smbd has now been removed.

A segfault in vfs_aio_fork for the smbd file server has been fixed

ldbadd and ldbmodify now handle each ldif file in a single
transaction, when modifying a local ldb.

Further improvements to the dlz_bind9 and internal DNS servers.


Some major but less visible changes include:

Initial support for s3fs, using the smbd file server in the AD Domain
controller has been added (but not yet finished, so not exposed)

Samba now only uses the _FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 API for accessing large
files, not the _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE API.

All Samba daemons now monitor stdin when launched in the foreground,
and shutdown when stdin is closed.  We also ensure that all child
processes are clened up by a similar mechanism.  This ensures that
stray processes do not hang around, particularly in make test.

Further preparation work for moving to TDB2, a new version of Samba's core TDB
database.

Early implementation work on the SMB 2.2 protocol client and server as
the team improves and develops support these new protocols.

The last of the old-style krb5 ticket handling has been removed.


KNOWN ISSUES
============

- upgradeprovision should not be run when upgrading to this release
  from a recent release.  No important database format changes have
  been made since alpha16.  

- The BIND 9 DLZ plugin is compatible only with BIND 9.8, not BIND 9.9. 

- Systems with tdb or ldb installed as a system library may have
  difficulty building this release of Samba4.  The --disable-tdb2
  configure switch may be of assistance.

- Installation on systems without a system iconv (and developer
  headers at compile time) is known to cause errors when dealing with
  non-ASCII characters.

- In some situations, group members may not be upgraded by the
  samba-tool domain samba3upgrade tool

- Domain member support in the 'samba' binary is in it's infancy, and
  is not comparable to the support found in winbindd.  As such, do not
  use the 'samba' binary (provided for the AD server) on a member
  server.

- There is no printing support in the 'samba' binary (use smbd instead)

- There is no NetBIOS browsing support (network neighbourhood) in the
  'samba' binary (use nmbd and smbd instead)

- Clock Synchronisation is critical.  Many 'wrong password' errors are
  actually due to Kerberos objecting to a clock skew between client
  and server.  (The NTP work in the previous alphas are partly to assist
  with this problem).

- The DRS replication code may fail.  Please contact the team if you
  experience issues with DRS replication, as we have fixed many issues
  here in response to feedback from our production users. 

RUNNING Samba 4.0 as an AD DC
=============================

A short guide to setting up Samba 4 as an AD DC can be found on the wiki:

  http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/HOWTO

#######################################
Reporting bugs & Development Discussion
#######################################

Please discuss this release on the samba-technical mailing list or by
joining the #samba-technical IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

If you do report problems then please try to send high quality
feedback. If you don't provide vital information to help us track down
the problem then you will probably be ignored.  All bug reports should
be filed under the Samba 4.0 product in the project's Bugzilla
database (https://bugzilla.samba.org/).


======================================================================
== Our Code, Our Bugs, Our Responsibility.
== The Samba Team
======================================================================