Existing OpenLDAP setups (Score 5, Informative)

I agree, existing OpenLDAP sites using Samba 3.x in cooperation with a host of other packages, using the traditional LDAP directory structure deployed on many Linux oriented sites are not going to migrate to Samba 4.0 as an AD DC any time soon. The change is just as big as the change to migrate to Microsoft's Active Directory, except that we provide a tested upgrade tool to handle the Samba-essential parts.

We want this to be easier, and the tools can certainly be extended to cover other schema items, and integration of these services can improve, because many of these can work well against a Microsoft Windows AD. However, we know this is a big leap, so we continue to support existing configurations (with the existing features. (For want of a better term, we call it a 'classic' domain).

The issue isn't as much being unable to use an LDAP server as a data store (but this became more difficult as we became more like AD), as that unless we were to implement on the fly schema translation, most of the same issues would remain (assumptions about AD or traditional schema and layout between Samba and the other tools on the LDAP backend), and so the result would not have be useful anyway!

As such, the LDAP backend has been put aside as an interesting technical modal that didn't work out. If a plausible use case ever comes up, then interested developers might revive some of it (the code and some tests remain where they are not impeding development), but for now there are no plans for support of anything other than local LDB files and native replication with other AD servers.

Andrew Bartlett
Samba Team