Samba 4.5 Features added/changed

Samba 4.5.0

Release Notes for Samba 4.5.0

September 7, 2016

Release Announcements

This is the first stable release of the Samba 4.5 release series.

UPGRADING

NTLMv1 authentication disabled by default

In order to improve security we have changed the default value for the "ntlm auth" option from "yes" to "no". This may have impact on very old clients which doesn't support NTLMv2 yet.

The primary user of NTLMv1 is MSCHAPv2 for VPNs and 802.1x.

By default, Samba will only allow NTLMv2 via NTLMSSP now, as we have the following default "lanman auth = no", "ntlm auth = no" and "raw NTLMv2 auth = no".

NEW FEATURES/CHANGES

Support for LDAP_SERVER_NOTIFICATION_OID

The ldap server has support for the LDAP_SERVER_NOTIFICATION_OID control. This can be used to monitor the Active Directory database for changes.

KCC improvements for sparse network replication

The Samba KCC will now be the default knowledge consistency checker in Samba AD. Instead of using full mesh replication between every DC, the KCC will set up connections to optimize replication latency and cost (using site links to calculate the routes). This change should allow larger domains to function significantly better in terms of replication traffic and the time spent performing DRS replication.

VLV - Virtual List View

The VLV Control allows applications to page the LDAP directory in the way you might expect a live phone book application to operate, without first downloading the entire directory.

DRS Replication for the AD DC

DRS Replication in Samba 4.5 is now much more efficient in handling linked attributes, particularly in large domains with over 1000 group memberships or other links.

Replication is also much more reliable in the handling of tree renames, such as the rename of an organizational unit containing many users. Extensive tests have been added to ensure this code remains reliable, particularly in the case of conflicts between objects added with the same name on different servers.

Schema updates are also handled much more reliably.

samba-tool drs replicate with new options

'samba-tool drs replicate' got two new options:

• The option '--local-online' will do the DsReplicaSync() via IRPC to the local dreplsrv service.
• The option '--async-op' will add DRSUAPI_DRS_ASYNC_OP to the DsReplicaSync(), which won't wait for the replication result.

replPropertyMetaData Changes

During the development of the DRS replication, tests showed that Samba stores the replPropertyMetaData object incorrectly. To address this, be aware that 'dbcheck' will now detect and offer to fix all objects in the domain for this error.

For further information and instructions how to fix the problem, see https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Updating_Samba#Fixing_replPropertyMetaData_Attributes

Linked attributes on deleted objects

In Active Directory, an object that has been tombstoned or recycled has no linked attributes. However, Samba incorrectly maintained such links, slowing replication and run-time performance. 'dbcheck' now offers to remove such links, and they are no longer kept after the object is tombstoned or recycled.

Improved AD DC performance

Many other improvements have been made to our LDAP database layer in the AD DC, to improve performance, both during 'samba-tool domain provision' and at runtime.

Other dbcheck improvements

• 'samba-tool dbcheck' can now find and fix a missing or corrupted 'deleted objects' container.
• BUG #11433: samba-dbcheck no longer offers to resort auxiliary class values in objectClass as these were then re-sorted at the next dbcheck indefinitely.

Tombstone Reanimation

Samba now supports tombstone reanimation, a feature in the AD DC allowing tombstones, that is objects which have been deleted, to be restored with the original SID and GUID still in place.

Multiple DNS Forwarders on the AD DC

Previously, the Samba internal DNS server supported only one DNS forwarder. The "dns forwarder" option has been enhanced and now supports a space-separated list of multiple DNS server IP addresses. As a result, Samba is now able to fall back to alternative DNS servers. In case that a DNS query to the first server timed out, it is sent to the next DNS server listed in the option.

Password quality plugin support in the AD DC

The check password script now operates correctly in the AD DC

pwdLastSet is now correctly honoured

BUG #9654: The pwdLastSet attribute is now correctly handled (this previously permitted passwords that expire next).

net ads dns unregister

It is now possible to remove the DNS entries created with 'net ads register' with the matching 'net ads unregister' command.

samba-tool improvements

Running 'samba-tool' on the command line should now be a lot snappier. The tool now only loads the code specific to the subcommand that you wish to run.

SMB 2.1 Leases enabled by default=

Leasing is an SMB 2.1 (and higher) feature which allows clients to aggressively cache files locally above and beyond the caching allowed by SMB 1 oplocks. This feature was disabled in previous releases, but the SMB2 leasing code is now considered mature and stable enough to be enabled by default.

Open File Description (OFD) Locks

On systems that support them (currently only Linux), the fileserver now uses Open File Description (OFD) locks instead of POSIX locks to implement client byte range locks. As these locks are associated with a specific file descriptor on a file this allows more efficient use when multiple descriptors having file locks are opened onto the same file. An internal tunable "smbd:force process locks = true" may be used to turn off OFD locks if there appear to be problems with them.

Password sync as Active Directory domain controller

The new commands 'samba-tool user getpassword' and 'samba-tool user syncpasswords' provide access and syncing of various password fields.

If compiled with GPGME support (--with-gpgme) it's possible to store cleartext passwords in a PGP/OpenGPG encrypted form by configuring the new "password hash gpg key ids" option. This requires gpgme devel and python packages to be installed (e.g. libgpgme11-dev and python-gpgme on Debian/Ubuntu).

Python crypto requirements

Some samba-tool subcommands require python-crypto and/or python-m2crypto packages to be installed.

SmartCard/PKINIT improvements

'samba-tool user create' accepts --smartcard-required and 'samba-tool user setpassword' accepts "--smartcard-required" and "--clear-smartcard-required".

Specifying "--smartcard-required" results in the UF_SMARTCARD_REQUIRED flags being set in the userAccountControl attribute. At the same time, the account password is reset to a random NTHASH value.

Interactive password logons are rejected, if the UF_SMARTCARD_REQUIRED bit is set in the userAccountControl attribute of a user.

When doing a PKINIT based Kerberos logon the KDC adds the required PAC_CREDENTIAL_INFO element to the authorization data. That means the NTHASH is shared between the PKINIT based client and the domain controller, which allows the client to do NTLM based authentication on behalf of the user. It also allows an offline logon using a smartcard to work on Windows clients.

CTDB changes

• New improved 'ctdb tool'

'ctdb tool' has been completely rewritten using new client API.

Usage messages are much improved.

• Sample CTDB configuration file is installed as ctdbd.conf.
• The use of real-time scheduling when taking locks has been narrowed to limit potential performance impacts on nodes.
• CTDB_RECOVERY_LOCK now supports specification of an external helper to take and hold the recovery lock.

See the RECOVERY LOCK section in ctdb(7) for details. Documentation for writing helpers is provided in doc/cluster_mutex_helper.txt.

• "ctdb natgwlist" has been replaced by a top level "ctdb natgw" command that has "master", "list" and "status" subcommands.
• The 'onnode' command no longer supports the "recmaster", "lvs" and "natgw" node specifications.
• Faster resetting of TCP connections to public IP addresses during failover.
• Tunables MaxRedirectCount, ReclockPingPeriod, DeferredRebalanceOnNodeAdd are now obsolete/ignored.
• "ctdb listvars" now lists all variables, including the first one.
• "ctdb xpnn", "ctdb rebalanceip" and "ctdb rebalancenode" have been removed.

These are not needed because "ctdb reloadips" should do the correct rebalancing.

• Output for the following commands has been simplified:

ctdb getdbseqnum

ctdb getdebug

ctdb getmonmode

ctdb getpid

ctdb getreclock

ctdb getpid

ctdb pnn

These now simply print the requested output with no preamble. This means that scripts no longer need to strip part of the output.

"ctdb getreclock" now prints nothing when the recovery lock is not set.

• Output for the following commands has been improved:

ctdb setdebug

ctdb uptime

• 'ctdb process-exists' has been updated to only take a PID argument.

The PNN can be specified with -n <PNN>. Output also cleaned up.

• LVS support has been reworked - related commands and configuration variables have changed

'ctdb lvsmaster' and 'ctdb lvs' have been replaced by a top level

'ctdb lvs' command that has "master", "list" and "status" subcommands.

See the LVS sections in ctdb(7) and ctdbd.conf(5) for details, including configuration changes.

• Improved sample NFS Ganesha call-out

New shadow_copy2 options

shadow:snapprefix

With growing number of snapshots file-systems need some mechanism to differentiate one set of snapshots from other, e.g. monthly, weekly, manual, special events, etc. Therefore, these file-systems provide different ways to tag snapshots, e.g. provide a configurable way to name snapshots, which is not just based on time. With only shadow:format it is very difficult to filter these snapshots. With this optional parameter, one can specify a variable prefix component for names of the snapshot directories in the file-system. If this parameter is set, together with the shadow:format and shadow:delimiter parameters it determines the possible names of snapshot directories in the file-system. The option only supports Basic Regular Expression (BRE).

shadow:delimiter

This optional parameter is used as a delimiter between "shadow:snapprefix" and "shadow:format" This parameter is used only when "shadow:snapprefix" is set.

Default: shadow:delimiter = "_GMT"

REMOVED FEATURES

"only user" and "username" parameters

These two parameters have long been deprecated and superseded by "valid users" and "invalid users".

smb.conf changes

 Parameter Name                Description             Default
 --------------                -----------             -------
 kccsrv:samba_kcc              Changed default         yes
 ntlm auth                     Changed default         no
 only user                     Removed
 password hash gpg key ids     New
 shadow:snapprefix             New
 shadow:delimiter              New                     _GMT
 smb2 leases                   Changed default         yes
 username                      Removed

KNOWN ISSUES

While a lot of schema replication bugs were fixed in this release BUG #12204 - Samba fails to replicate schema 69 is still open. The replication fails if more than 133 schema objects are added at the same time.

More open bugs are listed at: Release_Planning_for_Samba_4.5#All_bugs

CHANGES SINCE 4.5.0rc3

• Björn Baumbach <bb@sernet.de>

• BUG #12194: idmap_script: fix missing "IDTOSID" argument in scripts command line.

• Andrew Bartlett <abartlet@samba.org>

• BUG #12178: samba-tool dbcheck fails to fix replPropertyMetaData.

• Ralph Boehme <slow@samba.org>

• BUG #12177: Unexpected synthesized default ACL from vfs_acl_xattr.
• BUG #12181: vfs_acl_common not setting filesystem permissions anymore.
• BUG #12184: Loading shared RPC modules failed.

• Günther Deschner <gd@samba.org>

• BUG #12245: fix _spoolss_GetPrinterDataEx by moving the keyname length check.

• Stefan Metzmacher <metze@samba.org>

• BUG #11994: smbclient fails to connect to Azure or Apple share spnego fails with no mechListMIC.

• Martin Schwenke <martin@meltin.net>

• BUG #12180: CTDB crashes running eventscripts.

CHANGES SINCE 4.5.0rc2

• Michael Adam <obnox@samba.org>

• BUG #12155: Some idmap backends don't perform range checks for the result of sids_to_xids.

• Jeremy Allison <jra@samba.org>

• BUG #12115: Endless loop on drsuapi pull replication after schema changes.
• BUG #12135: net ads gpo refresh can crash with null pointer deref..
• BUG #12139: Race between break oplock and check for share_mode.
• BUG #12150: SMB2 snapshot query fails on DFS shares..
• BUG #12165: smbclient allinfo doesn't correctly return 'previous version' info over SMB1.
• BUG #12166: smbclient allinfo doesn't correctly return 'previous version' info over SMB2.
• BUG #12174: error: 'conn' undeclared.

• Douglas Bagnall <douglas.bagnall@catalyst.net.nz>

• BUG #12143: misnamed attribute in samba_kcc causes exception in unusual circumstances.
• BUG #12187: Backport changes for partial attribute set calculation for 4.5.

• Andrew Bartlett <abartlet@samba.org>

• BUG #12107: backport backupkey tests.
• BUG #12115: Endless loop on drsuapi pull replication after schema changes.
• BUG #12128: Correctly resolve replicated schema changes regarding linked attributes.

• Amitay Isaacs <amitay@gmail.com>

• BUG #12137: Fix printf format non-liternal warnings and printf format errors.
• BUG #12138: Fix uninitialized timeout in ctdb_pmda.
• BUG #12151: Drop resurrected ctdb commands in new ctdb tool.
• BUG #12152: Fix ctdb addip; implementation to match ctdb delip.
• BUG #12163: Fix missing arguments and format elements in format strings.
• BUG #12168: Fix format-nonliteral warnings.

• Stefan Metzmacher <metze@samba.org>

• BUG #12108: Backport selftest/autobuild fixes to v4-5-test.
• BUG #12114: In memory schema updated on non schema master.
• BUG #12115: Endless loop on drsuapi pull replication after schema changes.
• BUG #12128: Correctly resolve replicated schema changes regarding linked attributes.
• BUG #12129: let samba-tool ldapcmp ignore whenChanged.

• Garming Sam <garming@catalyst.net.nz>

• BUG #12187: Backport changes for partial attribute set calculation for 4.5.

• Andreas Schneider <asn@samba.org>

• BUG #12175: smbget always prompts for a username.

• Christof Schmitt <cs@samba.org>

• BUG #12150: SMB2 snapshot query fails on DFS shares..

• Martin Schwenke <martin@meltin.net>

• BUG #12157: Coverity and related fixes.
• BUG #12158: CTDB release IP fixes.
• BUG #12161: Fix CTDB cumulative takeover timeout.
• BUG #12170: CTDB test runs can kill each other's ctdbd daemons.

• Uri Simchoni <uri@samba.org>

• BUG #12145: smbd: if inherit owner is enabled, the free disk on a folder should take the owner's quota into account.
• BUG #12149: smbd: cannot load a Windows device driver from a Samba share via SMB2.
• BUG #12172: a snapshot folder cannot be accessed via SMB1.

CHANGES SINCE 4.5.0rc1

• Ralph Boehme <slow@samba.org>

• BUG #12005: parse_share_modes() chokes on ctdb tombstone record from ltdb.
• BUG #12105: smbclient connection to not reachable IP eats 100% CPU.

• Ira Cooper <ira@samba.org>

• BUG #12133: source3/wscript: Add support for disabling vfs_cephfs.

• Amitay Isaacs <amitay@gmail.com>

• BUG #12121: ctdb-tools: Fix numerous Coverity IDs and other issues.
• BUG #12122: If a transaction fails, it should be canceled and transaction handle should be freed.
• BUG #12134: dbwrap: Fix structure initialization.

• Marc Muehlfeld <mmuehlfeld@samba.org>

• BUG #12023: man: Fix wrong option for parameter "ldap ssl" in smb.conf man page.

• Andreas Schneider <asn@samba.org>

• BUG #12104: ctdb-waf: Move ctdb tests to libexec directory.

• Martin Schwenke <martin@meltin.net>

• BUG #12104: ctdb-packaging: Move ctdb tests to libexec directory.
• BUG #12109: Fixes several CTDB tests.
• BUG #12110: Fix numerous Coverity IDs.
• BUG #12113: ctdb-mutex: Avoid corner case where helper is already reparented to init.
• BUG #12123: Fix ctdb tickle command and update documentation.
• BUG #12125: CTDB overwrites working configuration due to packaging change.
• BUG #12126: Fix broken CTDB log messages.

https://download.samba.org/pub/samba/rc/samba-4.5.0rc1.WHATSNEW.txt