Roadmap

Introduction

This page describes the bigger next steps in the development of Samba. The purpose is to point out the broader direction into which Samba is heading.

If a feature listed below is flagged as FUNDED, this means that someone is currently being paid to work on it. Hence there are realistic chances that this feature might be completed in a reasonably short time frame. For all other features, further involvement is needed: Otherwise it could even take years to complete even if a feature is flagged as work in progress (WIP), since these are usually being worked on in someone's spare time.

Involvement is highly welcome and can come in various guises: Manpower for coding, testing, documentation, ...

Contact the Samba Team go get involved!

Features

File Server (smbd)

SMB2/SMB3

• FUNDED: Implement multi-channel (Michael, Metze)
• FUNDED: Implement the witness service (Günther, Metze)
  • Prerequisite: A asynchronous RPC server. See DCERPC
• FUNDED for Gluster: Clustering (continuous availability, scale-out) - Planning (Ira, Michael, ...)
• FUNDED for Gluster: Persistent file handles - Planning (Ira, Michael, ...) (Do not expect this immediately - Ira)
• RDMA (SMB direct) - Planning (Metze, Richard, Michael, Ira)
• Directory leases

Clustering - CTDB

• integrate the clustered file server into selftest/autobuild - WIP (Michael)

File Systems

Support for special features of various file systems, especially cluster file systems, typically through VFS modules.

• FUNDED: gpfs
• FUNDED: GlusterFS
• CephFS
• ...

Performance

Performance tuning and optimization is an important reoccurring topic. It is difficult to really track the current issues...

• performance in clusters, TDB/CTDB
• Parallel, small I/O (HyperV) workload

Print Server (smbd|spoolssd)

• SPOOLSS
  • Improve Spoolss Server performance
  • Improve Spoolss Testsuite
• Improve Winreg performance

Active Directory Server

• FUNDED: MIT Kerberos support (Andreas, Günther)
• FUNDED: Two-way forest trusts (Metze)
• FUNDED: Use the OpenLDAP Database engine and LDAP protocol handlers in AD server
• FUNDED: Correct non-mesh inter-site and intra-site replication via Knowledge Consistency Checker (KCC) (Andrew Bartlett, Garming Sam, Douglas

Bagnall)

• DNS
• Directory Replication Service (DRS)
• sysvol Replication (FRS/DFSR)
• Read-only Domain Controller (RODC)
• Subdomain support
• One way trusts
• Support all LSA and Netlogon server functions

DCERPC infrastructure

The RPC server infrastructure component is of crucial importance for both the file server and the active directory server. A few tasks in for the RPC server are prerequisites for higher level features in the file server and the active directory server. See DCERPC for details.

• Merge source3 and source4 server and client implementations (Metze)
• Make RPC server (and client) implementation fully asynchronuous (Metze)
• Merge endpoint mapper implementations
• Implement Association groups

• async schannel (NETLOGON) client (Metze)
• merged crypto handling for samlogon cred validation (Günther/Metze)
• merged libnetjoin interfaces (Günther/Metze)

Testing

• Multi-trust environments setup to test trusts
• Rewrite and improve the Selftest Suite

Completed tasks

File Server

• SMB 2.0 durable file handles
• SMB 2.1 Leases
• SMB 2.1 Multi-Credit
• SMB 3.0 protocol support (including encryption)

• Transparent file compression
• Serverside copy using COPYCHUNK

• Improved performance on small-CPUs
• Improved TDB database performance (using robust mutex locking)

Clustering - CTDB

• integrate CTDB master into samba master:
  • integrate the code under ctdb/
  • integrate the build into the top level waf build

Active Directory Server

• internal dns server
• use smbd as file server
• use winbindd for id-mapping

DCERPC Infrastructure

• common secure channel implementation

Testing

• Implement preloadable wrappers for better testing - The cwrap project