Samba 4.0 released

https://www.samba.org/samba/news/releases/4.0.0.html

by zdw • 14 years ago

135 72 14 years ago

RyanZAG• 14 years ago

One more stake in Microsoft's coffin? With their Win8 tablet/mobile strategy not doing too great and rapidly improving office alternatives... Is the MS legendary lock-in cracking apart?

shmerl3• 14 years ago

You can the deterioration of DirectX domination in the gaming market.

shmerl3• 14 years ago

I mean "you can add".

flyinRyan• 14 years ago

What has overtaken it? Open GL? Got any citations on that because that wasn't my impression at all.

dsr_• 14 years ago

There are few people running Windows AD who are going to view this as their next step, largely because they've already become used to running those Windows boxes.

For groups who aren't fully invested in AD, or need compatibility with those who are, this is a major win.

josemariaruiz4• 14 years ago

Microsoft AD is the ONLY reason many companies (Apple shops included) have Microsoft servers. People cannot imagine how disruptive is a fully operational Samba 4.0 AD for Microsoft. (like a fully operational space station with a planet destroying laser :p)

fleitz• 14 years ago

If you can offer AD as a service you could setup a tidy business, otherwise not very many people are going to look at this.

Small companies don't have the expertise, large companies can't afford the risk.

vy8vWJlco2• 14 years ago

Never underestimate the power of "free, as in cheap." :)

jmspring• 14 years ago

"free, as in cheap" does not apply in the case of an existing infrastructure with staff already trained on using the deployed (AD) system.

axusgrad• 14 years ago

How are the GUIs for Samba 4.0 AD features? I usually prefer nice configuration files, but the Windows Server features were very easy to learn. Another nice thing about Windows Server, updates are "free" after a high up-front cost.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

I'm not much a Windows guy, but is this really a full drop in replacement for all AD features?

josemariaruiz4• 14 years ago

Duke Nukem forever... Samba 4.0... what's the next? A GNU/Hurd competitor to Ubuntu? Space travels to Pluto? Time machines?

jf• 14 years ago

> A GNU/Hurd competitor to Ubuntu?

Well, there is this: http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/

josemariaruiz4• 14 years ago

"Get Xorg + gnome/kde/xfce (xfce should work, kde is missing working dbus (due to local socket auth and bugs in select() cornercases)) + some webbrowser working (iceweasel 9 works, though not https)."

From GNU/Hurd TODO list :)

duskwuff• 14 years ago

HURD can largely be regarded as a cruel joke. It's been under development for over twenty years (since 1990!) without yet producing a usable product. Pretty much every operating system kernel that's in use today (Linux, the BSD family, Windows NT, and XNU) is younger than HURD, and yet far more mature.

yuhong• 14 years ago

Even MS took years to finish Windows 2000 with Active Directory.

fafner• 14 years ago

e17 is next: https://e17releasemanager.wordpress.com/

molf• 14 years ago

This is fantastic. Microsoft Active Directory is truly awesome, but a replacement that is both free and runs on Linux? Yes please.

Osmium• 14 years ago

Any news on if Samba 4.0 is still single-threaded? (the page isn't loading for me) I recently wanted to use Samba, but was limited by performance on a low-end dual core processor: it'd max out one core, and be unable to use the other. I'm sure they have (or have had) good reasons for not doing this, but with so many low-power multicore processors out there now it seems a shame...

cryptomilk2• 14 years ago

Samba has a flexible process model so you can choose what you want: forking, preforking, threading (bad) or a single (for debuging) process model.

sk5t6• 14 years ago

As probably one of the more AD-focused participants on HN, I have to approach this with a good dose of skepticism w.r.t. large companies adopting Samba for complex AD environments. AD + DFSN + (DFSR|NTFRS) + LDAP + SSL + RPC + NTP + GPO + CIFS + NTFS + SDDL + WMI + ADWS + etc., is an extremely complex set of stuff to implement, and the cost of supporting a third-party version could, IMHO, easily dwarf the cost of a few Windows licenses to run the domain controllers.

So many examples come to mind that it is hard to pick just one or two... consider an organization that configures access to Windows event logs (audit trails) and SMB signing requirements via GPO; will Samba 4 Domain Controllers honor that? What does it even mean to have access to modify the security auditing policy on a Samba DC without totally reimplementing the eventing system (syslog is not even close)?

In other words, AD sits on top of a ton of mature but sophisticated Windows services, the failure of any of which could be a critical problem, and make for a tough sell unless one has a pathological hatred of Microsoft yet still wishes to use AD anyway.

tptacek• 14 years ago

... and if you have enough control over your environment to replace Windows Server as a domain controller, why would you be using the AD stack to begin with?

sk5t6• 14 years ago

Aye, if one has that much motivation to chuck Windows for AD, then it's only logical that Windows on the desktop, Exchange, etc., are not on the scene.

I've done a lot of work with other directory servers too, and AD does the best job of any when it comes to multimaster replication and a few other things. However, using it purely for LDAP for an environment full of Linux and OS X machines is a tough call...

JoshTriplett• 14 years ago

Just like many existing development companies have Windows-based infrastructure with both Windows and Linux on end-user systems, it makes sense to have Linux-based infrastructure while still supporting Windows end-user systems.

Linux support for AD also allows incremental migration of this infrastructure.

brokenparser4• 14 years ago

Rsyslog is way beyond Windows Event Logger. Audit trails should still work but I don't know if your GPO maps to server configuration automatically. It's easy to test, though. If you want to get started with Samba quickly, you can use Zentyal.

sk5t6• 14 years ago

I didn't mean to say that the Windows Event Log is better than syslog or Rsyslog, but it has a particular structure that is really dissimilar, as well as access patterns (WMI, WinRM) that lack an analog.

rufugee6• 14 years ago

It's not the cost of a few domain controllers...it's the $50-60/user cost of client access license (CALS). I have 2500 users...that's quite a pricey (approx. $62K) system for directory services.

I personally am going to give Samba 4 a look.

sk5t6• 14 years ago

If getting AD Domain Services off of Windows will actually avoid the need to buy any Windows Server CALs, then it certainly makes the proposition more interesting. But, this presumes that nearly all the other services (file sharing, http, etc.) are also not Windows.

dbrian• 14 years ago

If it costs 1 more sysadmin to support it, then it isn't worth it.

pippy• 14 years ago

So samba 4.0 Samaba would be worth it, even if it required an entry level position (most likely part time)

jsz0• 14 years ago

$62k sounds like a pretty good deal when you consider:

1) It's probably not enough money to hire even one extra IT person to deal with new issues that will arise with Samba 4

2) Linux sysadmins are more expensive than Windows sysadmins.

3) Cost of retraining existing IT staff.

4) Potential loss of productivity of your 2500 users

5) Lack of commercial support options.

6) Uncertainty about the future of Samba in general (release time tables, feature support, etc)

illumin8• 14 years ago

I think you don't really understand what Samba is for: OEMs. There are several very large companies selling rock solid enterprise NAS devices that need a rock solid implementation of CIFS on top of the seamless ability to join an AD domain. When large companies want to setup Windows file servers, they don't exactly want to stick a bunch of hard drives in a server and pray it doesn't go down - even clustered Windows file servers are extremely complex and have all kinds of failure modes that can cause hours or even days of downtime. Large companies simply want to buy a NetApp or some other enterprise class NAS storage device and have it integrate seamlessly with their Windows AD infrastructure. Samba now offers that. Storage companies that are experts at building highly redundant no single point of failure systems can now use open source software to deliver technology to the enterprise.

sk5t6• 14 years ago

Hmm, you're arguing against a point I didn't make... my concerns are around replacing AD Domain Controllers with Samba. I think Samba's core bits do a fine job as a SMB/CIFS server along with krb5/PAM and Winbind.

polarix• 14 years ago

Last time I tried to use Samba 4, earlier this year, most of the config directives I was trying to use weren't supported. Has that changed?

mrb• 14 years ago

Yes. Except the one you had on line 42.

Seriously, how do you expect someone to give you a useful reply?

buster• 14 years ago

I, for one,am extremely glad that i'm not the only one with the line 42 problem!

rbanffy2• 14 years ago

You assume he actually wants a useful answer.

obituary_latte• 14 years ago

Well, if the current version is any indication...

Fortuitously for this article, I've spent the entire day today trying to get samba sharing with AD. Oh, NT_USER_NOT_PERMITTED? Bbbut, the user is there; I even have it working on another server!

I'm sure it's my fault, but still, as of this moment, I hate samba more than almost everything.

At any rate, congrats.

japaget• 14 years ago

Link is down; here is an alternative:

http://www.samba.org/samba/history/samba-4.0.0.html

thyrsus• 14 years ago

Thanks for that. The error I get when attempting to go to the original URL ( https://www.samba.org/samba/news/releases/4.0.0.html ) is

    Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s).

    (Error code: ssl_error_no_cypher_overlap)

I went to about:config and turned on all the default-disabled ssl ciphers (per https://support.mozilla.org/es/questions/818578 ) but it didn't resolve the trouble.

UPDATE: I tried restarting my browser, and then it worked BUT after trying to do a binary search on which cipher setting was the "fix", I got to where everything was back to default, and the site still works. Probably there was a site problem that was fixed in the interim.

madao• 14 years ago

When people start mentioning price for these sorts of things I get a little confused, volume licensing for a bunch of hyper-v servers running 20-30 windows guests is actually quite cheap (you only have to pay for each licensed host server) I also have seen mention of a per user cost for ad? not sure where you got that from... I think exchange goes for about 6 bucks a user or so.. the next office setup ill be looking at will be three beefy hyper-v servers and running most applications on windows core... windows is now getting to the point where the only time I need to do any work is for weekly windows updates.

jeremiep• 14 years ago

Some companies have more than 20-30 employees. All these "quite cheap" expenses quickly add up. This is money better spent towards getting a better product on the shelves.

Now when you consider that managing unix machines requires much less work to begin with, you can't look at "quite cheap" the same way anymore - it's actually "quite expensive".

Not to mention I often see improved performance of server applications just by switching them to a linux host. Samba 4 is indeed very good news.

theatrus2• 14 years ago

A 5-user CAL pack for Exchange is ~$400, about $75 per user.

http://www.amazon.com/Exchange-Standard-2010-English-User/dp...

A Windows server CAL is about $20 per device.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832416...

Windows licensing is somewhat a mess, between user CALs, device CALs, processor CALs, or combinations thereof. You can see why Google's $50/user/year price is attractive - no hardware to buy, no CALs to buy, no client software to buy.

Samba 4.0 released

Related Stories