Samba 4.18 Features added/changed

Samba 4.18 is Upcoming Release.

Samba 4.18.0rc2

Release Announcements

Release Notes for 4.18.0rc2

February 1, 2023

This is the second release candidate of Samba 4.18. This is *not* intended for production environments and is designed for testing purposes only. Please report any defects via the Samba bug reporting system at https://bugzilla.samba.org/.

Samba 4.18 will be the next version of the Samba suite ...

NEW FEATURES/CHANGES

More succinct samba-tool error messages

Historically samba-tool has reported user error or misconfiguration by means of a Python traceback, showing you where in its code it noticed something was wrong, but not always exactly what is amiss. Now it tries harder to identify the true cause and restrict its output to describing that. Particular cases include:

• a username or password is incorrect
• an ldb database filename is wrong (including in smb.conf)
• samba-tool dns: various zones or records do not exist
• samba-tool ntacl: certain files are missing
• the network seems to be down
• bad --realm or --debug arguments

Accessing the old samba-tool messages

This is not new, but users are reminded they can get the full Python stack trace, along with other noise, by using the argument '-d3'. This may be useful when searching the web.

The intention is that when samba-tool encounters an unrecognised problem (especially a bug), it will still output a Python traceback. If you encounter a problem that has been incorrectly identified by samba-tool, please report it on https://bugzilla.samba.org.

Colour output with samba-tool --color

For some time a few samba-tool commands have had a --color=yes|no|auto option, which determines whether the command outputs ANSI colour codes. Now all samba-tool commands support this option, which now also accepts 'always' and 'force' for 'yes', 'never' and 'none' for 'no', and 'tty' and 'if-tty' for 'auto' (this more closely matches convention). With --color=auto, or when --color is omitted, colour codes are only used when output is directed to a terminal.

Most commands have very little colour in any case. For those that already used it, the defaults have changed slightly.

• samba-tool drs showrepl: default is now 'auto', not 'no'
• samba-tool visualize: the interactions between --color-scheme, --color, and --output have changed slightly. When --color-scheme is set it overrides --color for the purpose of the output diagram, but not for other output like error messages.

No colour with NO_COLOR environment variable

With both samba-tool --color=auto (see above) and some other places where we use ANSI colour codes, the NO_COLOR environment variable will disable colour output. See https://no-color.org/ for a description of this variable. `samba-tool --color=always` will use colour regardless of NO_COLOR.

New wbinfo option --change-secret-at

The wbinfo command has a new option, --change-secret-at=<DOMAIN CONTROLLER> which forces the trust account password to be changed at a specified domain controller. If the specified domain controller cannot be contacted the password change fails rather than trying other DCs.

New option to change the NT ACL default location

Usually the NT ACLs are stored in the security.NTACL extended attribute (xattr) of files and directories. The new "acl_xattr:security_acl_name" option allows to redefine the default location. The default "security.NTACL" is a protected location, which means the content of the security.NTACL attribute is not accessible from normal users outside of Samba. When this option is set to use a user-defined value, e.g. user.NTACL then any user can potentially access and overwrite this information. The module prevents access to this xattr over SMB, but the xattr may still be accessed by other means (eg local access, SSH, NFS). This option must only be used when this consequence is clearly understood and when specific precautions are taken to avoid compromising the ACL content.

Azure Active Directory / Office365 synchronisation improvements

Use of the Azure AD Connect cloud sync tool is now supported for password hash synchronisation, allowing Samba AD Domains to synchronise passwords with this popular cloud environment.

smb.conf changes

 Parameter Name                          Description     Default
 --------------                          -----------     -------
 acl_xattr:security_acl_name             New             security.NTACL

CHANGES SINCE 4.18.0rc1

• Andrew Bartlett <abartlet@samba.org>

• BUG 10635: Office365 azure Password Sync not working.

• Stefan Metzmacher <metze@samba.org>

• BUG 15286: auth3_generate_session_info_pac leaks wbcAuthUserInfo.

• Noel Power <noel.power@suse.com>

• BUG 15293: With clustering enabled samba-bgqd can core dump due to use after free.

KNOWN ISSUES

Release_Planning_for_Samba_4.18#Release_blocking_bugs

https://download.samba.org/pub/samba/rc/samba-4.18.0rc2.WHATSNEW.txt