Samba/Status: Difference between revisions

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'''Samba4''' is a reworking of the Samba 3 implementation, with a goal of providing full AD support for all current Windows clients. Please see the main [[Samba4|Samba4 project]] page for a more complete description of the overall goals.
'''Samba4''' is a reworking of the Samba 3 implementation, with a goal of providing full AD support for all current Windows clients. Please see the main [[Samba4|Samba4 project]] page for a more complete description of the overall goals.


The intent of this page is to provide an overview of the status of various components, capabilities and features which are a part of the Samba4 project. This overview is more aimed at administrators and people who intend to install and ''use'' Samba than it is a technical rundown of features and development milestones. Hopefully, this document will help answer the question, ''"Is Samba4 at a place where I can put it to use in my environment, and have it actually help me accomplish what I need to do?"''
The intent of this page is to provide an overview of the status of various components, capabilities and features which are a part of the Samba4 project. This overview is more aimed at administrators and people who intend to install and ''use'' Samba than it is a technical rundown of features and development milestones. Hopefully, this document will help answer the question, ''"Has Samba4 matured to a point where I can put it to use in my environment, and have it actually help me accomplish what I need to do?"''


== Development Status ==
== Development Status ==

Revision as of 02:17, 31 May 2012

Samba Project Status

Samba4 is a reworking of the Samba 3 implementation, with a goal of providing full AD support for all current Windows clients. Please see the main Samba4 project page for a more complete description of the overall goals.

The intent of this page is to provide an overview of the status of various components, capabilities and features which are a part of the Samba4 project. This overview is more aimed at administrators and people who intend to install and use Samba than it is a technical rundown of features and development milestones. Hopefully, this document will help answer the question, "Has Samba4 matured to a point where I can put it to use in my environment, and have it actually help me accomplish what I need to do?"

Development Status

The Samba4 team has currently released Alpha 20 (01 May, 2012). Please see the Samba4 page for a complete list of Alpha releases. It is also possible to download development copies of the Samba4 software directly from the "git" repository. Detailed instructions on how to build and set up a Samba4 server can be found in the Samba4 HOWTO.

For detailed development status and a current list of bugs, please:

Functional Areas

In order to understand the overall status of the Samba4 project, it can be helpful to think of Samba as covering three main functional areas. There is a fair amount of overlap between these areas, both in terms of function and in the underlying libraries, but the areas are:

  • Domain Support (AD functionality): The core functionality in this area is largely feature complete and stable. There are several sites reporting that they have been using Samba4 as their primary production Domain Controller, in some cases for close to two years. (Think of the "80/20" rule.)
  • File Server: The Samba4 project actually started out as the "NTVFS Rewrite". (Tridge Slide set from 2003?) This area has been the focus of much of the current development activity, and is one of the primary blockers to going into "Beta" (or GA) status. Due to the rework of the underlying architecture and code, Samba4 has been significantly behind Samba3 functionality for some time. The "s3fs" effort is a way to support the current Samba3 level of functionality in Samba4.
  • Tools: There are a wide variety of tools, utilities and scripts that are built to support the creation, debugging and administration of a Samba4 based domain. These tools have seen a great deal of rapid development, reflecting the needs of testing and deployment of a wide range of installations. Most of these tools are command line based, or loadable libraries to be used by third party tools. An interesting note is that, the easiest approach to GUI based management of the domain is through downloading and installing the Microsoft Remote Administration Tools.

At a somewhat simplistic level, the AD functionality is the most stable of these areas. Prior to the introduction of the s3fs project, it was common to see installations using Samba4 as the DC, with older Samba3.x servers as part of the domain, functioning as the main file servers.

Feature Status

The following table is a high level breakdown of capabilities and features included in Samba4, along with some information on the completeness or usability of each capability. Please note that this is not by any means a complete list of capabilities!

Please see the end of the table for a rough description of the columns and their intent.

Feature/Capability Overall Status Dependencies Notes Contact Last Update
Domain Trusts Development planned winbind changes;
NTLM logins across trust
Working for DRS replication; NT4 level trusts to a S4 domain working, but not the other way around. In a cross forest trust, Samba server "completely trusts" the relationship -- ie. no SID filtering. NEEDS TESTING. (see also FreeIPA effort) Charles Tryon 29 May, 2012
winbind Stable Does not know how to talk to multiple domains (needed for NTLM logins across domain trusts) 29 May, 2012
Domain Logins (Users) Stable
Machine Accounts Stable
Windows 7 Support Stable Windows 7 clients able to join and participate in domain without any "hacks" or special registry modifications. 29 May, 2012
Internal DNS server Development Basic DNS operations working, but does not allow for secure DNS updates yet 01 May, 2012
Admin Tools Development samba-tool covers most command line functions; GUI administration through standard Windows AD, DNS and other administrative tools. 01 May, 2012
Group Policy Management Stable See the GPO section of the HOWTO document
NTVFS Development The original core Samba4 file server. Supports POSIX backend; Stackable and async; Does not yet support many of the common smbd attributes. Still in development, but replaced by s3fs as the default file server. 30 May, 2010
s3fs Working s3fs has now replaced NTVFS as the default in new provisioned databases. Use the --use-ntvfs option to provision to change this default. Still working on issues where it fails to correctly set ACLs for group policy objects based on POSIX attributes. 29 May, 2012
RODC
(Read Only DC)
Development major gap on RODCs at the moment is that we need to record the attributes that we replicate to the RODC. 29 May, 2012


Columns:

  • Feature: A short name of the feature or capability, such as an interface or AD feature. There may be some overlap between capabilities, and some sort of simple hierarchy.
  • Overall Status: A high level indication of the state the project is in. A single word is sufficient, but it can be a little longer. This list includes (but is not limited to):
  • Stable -- the feature may be going through some tweaking, but generally speaking, it's expected to work, at least at a "Alpha" level.
  • Working -- largely feature complete and working, but still dealing with non-trivial issues.
  • Testing -- the feature is generally complete, but needs a lot more testing before people can assume it's working.
  • Development -- the feature is being worked on, but still has lots of holes.
  • Nearing completion -- developers have a clear idea where the feature is going, and have implemented the bulk of it, but it's not really complete.
  • In Planning -- developers are actively hacking at a design. They have a good idea of a roadmap, but very little work has been done yet.
  • Refactoring -- Maybe this worked before, but there have been serious deficiencies discovered, and developers are in the middle of tearing out the guts...  :-(
  • Planned -- Recognized as needed, but no one has had time to sit down and begin to lay out a solution.
  • Out of Scope -- "In your dreams," right?
  • Dependencies: What other projects, interfaces, features, documentation or resources is this feature dependent on or waiting for?
  • Notes: This overlaps somewhat with the "Dependencies" section, but should list high level issues which are either holding up progress, or that still prevent the feature from being useful. This may also give known workarounds (e.g., "Fine grained control over shares is not supported by S4 -- use a parallel S3 server instead.")
  • Contact Person: This is not an exhaustive list of developers or testers involved. It could be a name or two of key person(s) directing this feature, or point person to ask questions. This could simply be a person who is interested in the feature, and acting to keep this status line up to date.
  • Last Update: When was the last time someone updated this feature? This should serve as an indicator as to how current (read: useful) this information is.

Time Line?? Notice that the list does NOT include a column for "When will this be DONE"!


--Bilbo 01:50, 31 May 2012 (UTC)