WHATS NEW IN Samba (The Next Generation) 2.0 ============================================ This is an ALPHA release of Samba TNG, the UNIX based SMB/CIFS file, print and login server for Windows systems. This release is to enlist the help of people who are unable to use cvs (http://samba.org/cvs.html) in a major development project to integrate Samba into a Windows NT (tm) Domain environment - the NT Domains for Unix project. If you are running Windows 9x and do not forsee the need for or need to use any Windows NT Workstations on your network in the near future, you will not need Samba TNG or any of its functionality, and your assistance is not being solicited in the development of this project. Major changes in Samba TNG -------------------------- There are many major changes in Samba TNG. Here are some of them: ===================================================================== 1). Windows NT (tm) Primary Domain Controller compatibility ----------------------------------------------------------- Samba TNG can act as a Primary Domain Controller to Windows NT 3.5, 4.0 and 5.0 (in 4.0 backwards-compatible mode) Workstations. Backup Domain Controller and Inter-Domain Trust Relationships are at an early, but functional and very hands-on, stage. 2). Support for Windows NT (tm) Administrative tools ---------------------------------------------------- Significant in-roads have been made into providing support for at least the following Windows NT (tm) tools and services: - User Manager for Domains - Server Manager for Domains - Event Log - Service Control Manager - Registry Editor A command-line tool named rpcclient, with a command-syntax similar to smbclient, has over sixty five commands that provide equivalent functionality for the same Windows NT (tm) Administrative tools, including the ability to remotely shut down a Windows NT (tm) Server. rpcclient has now been joined by net, samedit, regedit, ntspool, eventlog, lsa, cmdat and svccontrol. If anyone can think of better names for these, suggestions are welcomed. 3). Portability --------------- Samba is now self-configuring using GNU autoconf and libtool, removing the need for people installing Samba to have to hand configure Makefiles, as was needed in previous versions. You now configure Samba by running "./configure" then "make". See docs/textdocs/UNIX_INSTALL.txt for details. The use of libtool dramatically reduces the size of samba binaries. As we are using libtool in a slightly different way from usual, you may encounter run-time or compilation errors, so please repoty them to us. 4). New SAM Database Daemons ---------------------------- The SAM database daemon, samrd, is being considered "legacy", and the aim is to replace it. To this end, some new SAM database daemons are being developed - samrtdbd and samrnt5ldapd. They need to be run with their counterparts, netlogontdbd or netlogonnt5ldapd. None of these are build as part of the standard make, they have to be explicitly built because they are in development. ===================================================================== NOTE - Some important information --------------------------------------- Samba TNG up to alpha-0.3 required that the samba server be joined to its own Domain. This requirement has been removed. It is important that you read the source/README file for instructions, and it is recommended that you join samba-ntdom@samba.org for update information and status reports. For details, please see: http://samba.org/listproc/samba-ntdom ===================================================================== NOTE - Primary Domain Controller Functionality ---------------------------------------------- This version of Samba contains code that correctly implements the undocumented Primary Domain Controller authentication protocols. However, there is much more to being a Primary Domain Controller than serving Windows NT logon requests. A useful version of a Primary Domain Controller contains many remote procedure calls to do things like enumerate users, groups, and security information, 98% of which Samba TNG currently implements. This work is being done in the CVS (developer) versions of Samba, development of which continues at a fast pace. If you are interested in participating in or helping with this development please join the Samba-NTDOM mailing list. Details on joining are available at : http://samba.org/listproc/ Details on obtaining CVS (developer) versions of Samba are available at: http://samba.org/cvs.html For this version, use a tag of SAMBA_TNG ===================================================================== NOTE - Known Bugs ----------------- It is *not* recommended that this version of Samba be run in a production environment, for at least the following reasons: 1) nmbd is known to fork() every 20 minutes, resulting in an extra process that hangs around. It has also been reported, in a large network neighbourhood environment with "wins support = no" and "wins server = x.x.x.x" to flood the WINS server with about 3 requests per second to resolve every single name in the network neighbourhood. Be Warned! This issue appears to have been resolved, cause unknown, fix unknown. You can avoid this by using a stable, production release of nmbd, such as can be found in 2.0.6a or later. 2) The new MSRPC architecture forks() one MSRPC daemon per incoming service request. The msrpc daemon stays around for as long as the remote server maintains a connection to it. An investigation is underway to attempt to minimise the number of outstanding connections, because a *single* NT user logon can result in up to 5 or 6 msrpc daemons waiting around, doing nothing but take up process table space. Connection reuse has now been added and debugged: the number of incoming connections is reduced but still fairly large. 3) The Samba TNG code base was cut from the 2.0 development tree approximately eighteen months ago. That means that it does not have any of the file and print server improvements or bug-fixes since that time. The use of Samba TNG as a file and print server is therefore not recommended, and can be avoided by setting user profiles and home directories to be on another Windows NT (tm) or compatible file server. This release now has Samba CVS main smbd code, as of April 3rd 2000. ===================================================================== If you have problems, or think you have found a bug please email a report to : samba-technical@samba.org As always, all bugs are our responsibility. Regards, The Samba Team.