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Software Networking

Samba 4 Technology Preview Released 167

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the it-may-eat-your-cat dept.
daria42 writes "Samba creator Andrew Tridgell has officially released a technology preview of Samba 4 at the Linux.conf.au conference in New Zealand, ending a three-year wait for users. But wait before upgrading those servers. 'It may eat your cat,' says the Samba team in a statement, 'but is far more likely to choose to munch on your password database.'" From the article: "'Samba 4 supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon environment used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain join and domain logon operations with these clients,' the group said in a statement on its Web site, noting this feature was 'the main emphasis' for the new software."
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Samba 4 Technology Preview Released More

Samba 4 Technology Preview Released

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  • Jeremy Allison on Samba 4 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:46AM (#14556205)
    Came across this (short but interesting) interview with Jeremy Allison, one of the project's lead developers, where he talks about Samba 4:

    http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/modules.php?op=modloa d&name=News&file=article&sid=217 [linuxformat.co.uk]

    Any software that has a 'Susan Stage' has got to be cool :-)
    • Erm, he's not a major developer of samba 4, Tridge is, Andrew Bartlett is, and a few others are, but Jeremy isn't (at least according to Andrew Bartlett yesterday).

      I'm at LCA2006 and have spent several hours with both Tridge and Andrew Bartlett, testing, fixing bugs, and identifing missing features of samba4. I'm not a samba team member, just a sys-admin who wants samba4 to be the best code possible before I deploy it.

    • Re:Jeremy Allison on Samba 4 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by node 3 ( 115640 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @08:42AM (#14556428)
      There's a very interesting quote at the end of that article:
      "Let's be honest, we don't really care about selling it, we're just having fun doing it. So long as we're having fun and we're working on problems that interest us then other people can worry about market share and how you sell it to the government or whoever, because that's the stuff that interests them."

      If you think about it for a minute, if you consider how Open Source functions, where people work on the things that interest them, the "suits" that are often derided from some quarters are just filling a non-technical need in the Open Source community. There are often calls for people to test, write manuals, and create artwork as something they can do if they aren't programmers, but perhaps "marketing, sales, build corporations" are things that also should be added to that list?

      To clarify, I'm certainly not talking about the CherryOS-style GPL-theives, but honest and earnest businesspeople (even though their motives may be primarily cash, they still must abide by proper Open Source rules).

      Anyway, thought it was interesting.

      • Re:Jeremy Allison on Samba 4 (Score:4, Insightful)

        by smittyoneeach ( 243267 ) * on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @09:34AM (#14556693) Homepage Journal
        where people work on the things that interest them
        Let's not kid ourselves: this is the good news/bad news of FOSS.
        The genius of proprietary software: getting you to trade your sovreignty for code that does a lot of the less interesting stuff.
        Unless you're actually selling that printer, are you going to want to spend all day writing a driver for it, much less testing it against a bazillion OS's?
        • Obviously there *are* people who want to spend all day writing drivers for hardware, otherwise we'd have no drivers. "Because I want to sell X" and "because I want to buy X" are equally valid reasons for wanting a driver for X to exist.

        • Re:Jeremy Allison on Samba 4 (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Chemicalscum ( 525689 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @11:50AM (#14558064) Journal
          RMS started the Free Software Movement because he wanted to improve a printer driver for an early laser printer and they wouln't give him the source.
          • Case in point. I can PS print out of emacs well enough, but, for a nice booklet printout, I still need[1] to boot 'Doze and use a spiffier HP driver.

            [1]I realize that booklet printing is probably quite doable under Gentoo, I just haven't overcome the static friction of mabooty to figure it out.
            • Case in point. I can PS print out of emacs well enough, but, for a nice booklet printout, I still need[1] to boot 'Doze and use a spiffier HP driver.

              [1]I realize that booklet printing is probably quite doable under Gentoo, I just haven't overcome the static friction of mabooty to figure it out.

              In other words:

              "I have to use Windows[1].

              [1] I don't have to use Windows"
              • The learning curve of FOSS is nothing if not a lengthy, slippery slope, sir.
                Just got a udev-081 rule for my Logitech V200.
                Next emerge upgraded me to udev-081-r1, and my rule was TU[1]. Aunt Petunia would die, I just cussed and debugged.

                [1]Tits up.
        • Unless you're actually selling that printer, are you going to want to spend all day writing a driver for it, much less testing it against a bazillion OS's?

          This is wrong in so many ways.

          Here are four:

          1. Gimp-print, CUPS, etc, etc.
          2. (already mentioned) The straw that broke RMS's proprietary camel's back.
          3. It's possible to be paid to write Open Source software.
          4. If you already own the printer, that can be motivation enough.
        • "where people work on the things that interest them"

          People ALWAYS work on what interests them. The question is not "what", but "why" does the interest happen and "why" does the interest sustain. Consider the following hypothesis:

          - In the corporate world, the interest is maintained because of financial or power rewards.

          - In the dungeons of the cubical world, the interest is held by ?fear of losing income?, ?need for cash to survive?, ?lack of imagination? or any of a number of 'basic survivalist' needs.

          - I
      • "even though their motives may be primarily cash, they still must abide by proper Open Source rules"

        Just out of curiosity, what are these? Not 'all' rules -- but does anybody know (or offer wild speculation on) what happens when open source and fat wads of cash collide?
        • Just out of curiosity, what are these? Not 'all' rules -- but does anybody know (or offer wild speculation on) what happens when open source and fat wads of cash collide?

          There are many sets of rules (which add together to form a sort of "ecosystem" of rules, if you want).

          When the two collide depends on many things, including the perception of the "fat wads of cash", the license of the particular project, the vulnerability of the project to one person's whims and the nature of that person.

          A few examples:

          1. M

  • What Kind of Passwords Does It Prefer? (Score:3, Funny)

    by gurutc ( 613652 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:54AM (#14556232)
    Smooth or Crunchy?

  • Just Work (TM) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 ) <obsessivemathsfreak.eircom@net> on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:58AM (#14556242) Homepage Journal
    But can I make an anonymous read/write share without performing invasive surery on config files. And can I then easily mount that share?

    Samba is great as a home network share, but it's not a single click system. Security on a home netowrk doesn't really interest me. I'd like to be able to "just share" the files without setting up users etc, etc.

    • Re:Just Work (TM) (Score:5, Funny)

      by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @08:14AM (#14556299) Homepage
      Security on a home netowrk doesn't really interest me.

      I know - thats why I'm posting this from your home PC.

      I'd like to be able to "just share" the files without setting up users etc, etc.

      Just post your requirements here I'll set them up for you... after all I don't want your home net to be locked down ;-)

      Seriously - just because you would like software to be shipped insecure (and easy) by default doesn't mean that it should be. Have a look at this guide - Samba-3: A Simple Anonymous Read-Write Server [informit.com]

      • Re:Just Work (TM) (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Pecisk ( 688001 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @08:59AM (#14556492)
        What he meant there should be definetly easy way to turn it on, of course, with warning that some security problems could arise. AFAIK, KDE and GNOME has both easy ways to create shares for now, but there is no way to configure SAMBA for just several default scenarios which could be - anonymous read-only, anonymous read-write, user-based read-only, user-based read-write, custom. Default could be user-based read-only. Or something like that.

        For example, OS X Tiger server uses SAMBA for Windows support. Any mangling with configuration goes trough Server Admin GUI (you can mess with configuration file too), but any changes gets written back to standard smb.conf.

        It could be very good and nice present for common crowd.
        • Easy... as in SWAT? [samba.org]
          • Please, I talk about some common crowd and I talk about envorement GUI, GNOME/KDE based.
            I talk about very simple interface with one question and several choices.

        • Re:Just Work (TM) (Score:3, Interesting)

          by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
          I think the problem is that even if you tell samba that you want to make folders read/write anonymous, it still doesn't always work. This is because the anonymous user that samba uses also has to have access to those folders and files for read/write access. If it doesn't, then the system won't let samba access it, no matter how much it's config files tell it it should be able to. If you want a samba share that you can access anonymously from any computer, make a Fat32 partition, mount it read/write/execu

        • "AFAIK, KDE and GNOME has both easy ways to create shares for now, but there is no way to configure SAMBA for just several default scenarios which could be - anonymous read-only, anonymous read-write, user-based read-only, user-based read-write, custom. Default could be user-based read-only."

          SME Server [contribs.org] does exactly that, through a very simple web interface. If you need corporate support, Mitel Networks provides a hardware/software package [mitel.com] that's easily deployed into IT-less situations, like franchise off

    • Re:Just Work (TM) (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Samba isn't meant to provide a friendly user interface, it's meant to do the bit that makes it all work. Look to your desktop environment to provide a nice, friendly interface. And whaddaya know, KDE does it just fine.

    • Re:Just Work (TM) (Score:3, Informative)

      by rpbailey1642 ( 766298 )
      Well, granted I did have to set up the config file, but it wasn't too terribly difficult:
      [global]
      workgroup = WORKGROUP
      server string = Description of Server
      security = share

      ( Rpbailey Notes: This might be where you were led astray. You probably had samba set to use passwords instead of share security. )

      [Multimedia]
      path = /usr/multimedia
      writable = yes
      comment = Multimedia
      browseable = yes
      public = yes
      ---
      Just make sure that the directory in question is writable by your samba user (assuming yo

    • Re:Just Work (TM) (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zerocool^ ( 112121 )

      That's exactly what I thought. Samba is for network shares in a relatively simple environment. Authentication via Windows domain could be accomplished with more stability with Kerbeos / LDAP. It's what we do with our lab machines.

      And I would much prefer to use samba to share out my oggs and mp3s without needing a volcano and a goat.

      ~Will
    • Just use SSH.
    • mark the share as "guest only" then give the guest user ( usually the user nobody ) full rights to the shared directory.
    • http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc959.html [faqs.org] File Transfer Protocol

      http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/ccp14admin/security/secure_ tunnelling_ftp.htm [ccp14.ac.uk]
      Secure FTP transfers via Secure Shell Tunnelling

      http://winscp.net/eng/docs/introduction [winscp.net]
      WinSCP is an open source freeware SFTP client for Windows using SSH. Legacy SCP protocol is also supported. Its main function is safe copying of files between a local and a remote computer.

      etc. etc.

    • Re:Just Work (TM) (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mwood ( 25379 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @11:04AM (#14557553)
      "[Samba is] not a single click system." Hooray for that. I'd love to be able to give the boot to these Windows servers with their sysadmin-hostile pointy-clicky interfaces and their million and one secret Registry keys that have no user interface at all. Go Samba Team!
    • Webmin gives you an easy interface to Samba.

      And if you do need to manage users at some point, you can have webmin automatically propagate changes to other modules ( like samba )

  • it's in Debian (Score:5, Informative)

    by CAPSLOCK2000 ( 27149 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @07:59AM (#14556244) Homepage
    Debian allready has packages.
    Install them by running:
    aptitude install -t experimental samba

    But you'll need to add an entry for experimental to /etc/apt/sources.list first.
    If you don't know how to, you shouldn't be messing with experimental software anyway.

    • Re:it's in Debian (Score:4, Informative)

      by Thing 1 ( 178996 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @09:33AM (#14556690) Journal
      "If you don't know how to breathe, you shouldn't bother taking your first breath."

      Or, closer to the original: "Breathing. If you don't know how to, you shouldn't be messing with environmental oxygenation anyway."

      Here's a link to a howto [debian.org] for configuring your Debian installation to use the experimental packages. (It's in section 4.6.4.3, or just search on the page for "experimental".)

  • Samba 4 (Score:5, Informative)

    by YearOfTheDragon ( 527417 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @08:01AM (#14556250) Homepage
    There has been info about Samba 4 for some time. Andrew Bartlett [samba.org] wrote a year ago an interesting thesis about Samba 4 and Active Directory [samba.org] (PDF).

    But the release of this TP is good news, I hope that the use of Microsoft's Active Directory as an authentication service for Linux systems [securityfocus.com] is coming to an end. All what we need now is a nice GUI [samba.org].

  • What is this samba you speak of? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by squoozer ( 730327 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @08:11AM (#14556287)

    Since discovering the joys of NFS I've not looked back (yes I do know what samba is and I run a samba server). Compared to Samba, NFS is almost too simple and reliable. Give me my complixity and unreliablity back!

    • Re:What is this samba you speak of? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @08:36AM (#14556403)
      I'm not a sysadmin, but I never got how NFS prevented a user plugging a computer which they have root access on into the network, mounting a common NFS mount, "su"ing to somebody's UID and then deleting their files. AFAICS, SMB handles this by requiring credentials of some kind from the computer. Can anyone explain this?

      • Re:What is this samba you speak of? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Spacelord ( 27899 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @08:53AM (#14556471)
        I'm not a sysadmin, but I never got how NFS prevented a user plugging a computer which they have root access on into the network, mounting a common NFS mount, "su"ing to somebody's UID and then deleting their files. AFAICS, SMB handles this by requiring credentials of some kind from the computer. Can anyone explain this?

        "Authentication" with NFS is IP based. You grant access to NFS mounts by specifying which hosts can mount that share. This implies that the hosts you allow are trusted, and that your network is trusted as well. So yes, if a computer you have root access to has been granted read/write access to an NFS mount then you can just su to someone else's UID and delete their files on that NFS mount.

        Is it a good idea to use NFS in a security sensitive environment? Probably not.

      • I believe it is done via root squashing. Unless you specifically allow it you can't do root like things on the NFS mounts (such as deleting arbitary files) even if you are root on your machine. I forget exactly how it works as I set up and forgot about my NFS system a while ago but I left root squash on and it trips me up now and then. Physical intruders (someone pluging a computer into the network) aren't something I particularly worry about as I have a large iron bar next to me to hit anyone breaking in

      • The default behaviour is to not allow this. From the manual,
        man -S 5 exports

        Very often, it is not desirable that the root user on a client machine
        is also treated as root when accessing files on the NFS server. To this
        end, uid 0 is normally mapped to a different id: the so-called anony-
        mous or nobody uid. Th

        • Re:What is this samba you speak of? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @09:31AM (#14556672)
          That doesn't help when the root user creates a user account with the correct UID and then logs in as that user, does it?
          • That doesn't help when the root user creates a user account with the correct UID and then logs in as that user, does it?

            Nope. That's how I used to update some web files on a central NFS server here long after the person left. I just added an account with his UID on my workstation, mounted the central NFS server's web share and voila. I could read/write his files just fine. Traditional NFS is HORRIBLE from a security standpoint since the only authentication involved is IP based and the only authorizati

          • Agreed.

            In my opinion traditional NFS is not that secure, either against reading things "on the wire" or spoofing.

            As another poster has mentioned you can export the filesystem on a client by client basis. As a "bad guy" you have to take over the identity of one of those trusted clients (steal the IP address). Tricky but not impossible.

            The basic problem here is authenticating that the client really is the right client. IP addresses are not sufficient in this regard. For those that deem this necessar

      • There are two parts to the answer to that. Traditional NFS access control is entirely host based. You can map root on the remote computer to an unprivileged user or map an entire host to a single user, but that's about it. NFS was designed in an era where all of a network's computers were managed by the sysadmins, and you could reasonably trust the computers on your local net. That trust is now a liability for protocols like NFS and NIS.

        The extended answer is that the underlying rpc protocol has long su
      • Generally this (masquerading) is a problem with NFS. On a small LAN this isn't much of a big deal.

        Several ways to solve the problem. First, UID and GID can be centrally controlled on a LAN by use of NIS. Still, if the machine is under the control of someone else, a forged UID/GID may be presented.

        This can be controlled by the NFS server using "root squashing" or "all squash".

        Both of these options "distrust" the UID/GID. In the case of root squash, root UID (0) is remapped to "nobody". This is a good thing o

    • NFS and Samba (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DrYak ( 748999 )
      You know, the big problem is, that the PHB [wikipedia.org]s that are sitting at the head of big corps around have never heard of NFS. They've only seen the niiiiiice Shiiiiiinny PowerPoint presentation in Microsoft booths in big expos. And then, they have made their company to pay a lot for an over-priced non-standart Microsoft LDAP/Kerberos/SMB bastard (a.k.a. Active Domain) and are now knee deep into a locked-in solution from which there's no other out except paying an even higher price for the next even worse microsoft
      • Securing NFS is incredibly difficult. By default, NFS uses host-based authentication. The only way of making this secure is to:
        1. Only allow NFS access from a VPN.
        2. Drop all packets from VPN IPs that do not come from the VPN.
        3. Set up an authenticating VPN server.

        Doing this in a cross-platform way is a significant amount more effort than configuring Samba. Newer versions of NFS support things like Secure RPC and Kerberos authentication, but setting these up is still more effort than Samba (and good luck fi

      • Have you ever used NFS with more than a dozen or so machines? It sucks hard. I used to be a sysadmin in a place that used NFS extensively... NFS is and was a buggy, insecure piece of crap.
        • Have you ever used NFS with more than a dozen or so machines?

          The parent poster was speaking about how NFS is practical and fast for some small non-complex systems.
          It was *exactly* about cases with a dozen or so machines.

      • Re:NFS and Samba (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Bohiti ( 315707 )
        You're dreaming. I doubt there are [m]any Active Directory shops out there who "need an alternate and opensource solution to Microsoft". Those who implemented Active Directory generally did so because they're mostly a Windows shop. Got Windows on the desktop, might as well pay the relatively insignificant fee to use Windows Servers and the free LDAP directory that comes with it. Don't delude yourself, AD, especially 2003, is rock solid. And you get easy, intuitive interfaces and "it just works" setup f
    • Pfft. sshfs [sourceforge.net] is even simpler and more reliable, not to mention far, far more secure.

  • My cat lost his password (Score:5, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @08:31AM (#14556377)
    'It may eat your cat,' says the Samba team in a statement, 'but is far more likely to choose to munch on your password database.'

    Wow, it only took 25 days for Samba to break its New Year's resolution to eat less and lose weight.

  • NZ??? (Score:2, Funny)

    by oztiks ( 921504 )

    Linux.conf.au conference in New Zealand

    What the ... HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD!

    Since when did anything .au become New Zealands responsibility? Usually its the other way around! I.e blaming the existance of Russle Crow on Australians. This wasnt our fault HE WAS BORN IN NZ! Now they NZ is stealing our conferences. I for one find this an outrage!

  • But as an Active Directory replacement? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Money for Nothin' ( 754763 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @09:16AM (#14556583)
    Can it do authorization of group access to a given application? How about publishing network resources (printers, workstations, etc.)? Can Samba 4 replicate its data between multiple sites? Is Samba 4's AD functionality even built off any sort of LDAP technology to begin with (probably OpenLDAP, if anything)?

    For all MSFT's faults (and there are many, as /. routinely points out), AD *is* a decent NOS directory...

    • Re:But as an Active Directory replacement? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gentimjs ( 930934 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @09:26AM (#14556640) Journal
      Yes, active directory is decent - if you only ever want windows clients. I confess that Ive got a samba3 server (Gentooooooo) as "full" member of our W2K ActiveDirectory - and even got the permissions synced up enough so that users can right-click files and play with permissions through the gui on the doze client. HOWEVER this setup took weeks of tweakage, involved a dozen or so actual software packages, and required violating some published microsoft specs on how AD (supposedly...) works. If samba4 gives me this without the BS, I'm happy. If samba4 lets me replace my domain controller and have the existing doze infrastructure not notice, I'm even more happy.
      • I'm happy to hear you got all of these working, but this is exactly why I do not replace my Windows Domain/File servers with Samba. I've got enough to deal with now. I do not have the times to dedicate. I've been keeping a eye on the status of Samba and I have used Samba (Samba 2) before, but until I can get easy integration; It's just not a choice.

        I have a request though, Publish your work. Let others know how you did it. That information can lead to strides forward for Samba and those that wish to i
      • I ran into a problem with Samba 3 where there seems to be a cap on the number of groups an AD user can belong to if you're trying to authenticate a share based on AD Group membership. It seems that if a user belongs to around 20 AD groups, or the aggregate text length of the user's AD group names is too long, Samba will not recognize the user account's group membership past a certain point in the user's AD group membership list.

        To demonstrate this problem, make a new AD group and add a user account that al
    • Most of your questions are answered in TFA:
      Samba 4 supports the server-side of the Active Directory logon environment used by Windows 2000 and later, so we can do full domain join and domain logon operations with these clients," the group said in a statement on its Web site, noting this feature was "the main emphasis" for the new software.
      "Our domain controller implementation contains our own built-in LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server and Kerberos key distribution centre as well as the Sam

  • Which version of Active Directory? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by j-cloth ( 862412 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @09:34AM (#14556697)
    This all sounds great, but will it work when(if) Vista comes out? Previously, I had samba setups running beautifully on Win2K networks. Then 2003 came out and it messed it all up. Eventually Samba (and supporting docs) caught up and 2003 now works reasonably well. So will Samba 4 come out with great support for 2003 then break as soon as Vista is released?

    • Lets be clear - (Score:3, Informative)

      by gentimjs ( 930934 )
      Lets be clear on this point -
      When vista comes out, samba will not break.
      MS will simply have changed the standard/protocol/whatever in some way that thier own prior implementations will be tolerant of but Samba will not. Samba will not be busted, MS' own implementation of thier own technology (or other peoples tech, kerberos for example) is what will be busted.

      • Re:Lets be clear - (Score:3, Insightful)

        by grasshoppa ( 657393 )
        MS will simply have changed the standard/protocol/whatever in some way that thier own prior implementations will be tolerant of but Samba will not. Samba will not be busted, MS' own implementation of thier own technology (or other peoples tech, kerberos for example) is what will be busted.

        And, practically, does this make a difference? Can I look my boss in the eye and tell him that the mail server doesn't know who it's users are, but it's ok because it's MS's fault?
        • No, you can look your boss in the eye and tell him/her/it not to buy vista....
          Or if you are feeling brave, you can suggest they actually plan for these kinds of "gotchas" before they happen...
        • "And, practically, does this make a difference? Can I look my boss in the eye and tell him that the mail server doesn't know who it's users are, but it's ok because it's MS's fault?"

          Isn't the fact that "you have somebody to blame when things go wrong" a strong selling point for proprietary software? Why don't you give it a shot. If your boss finds out that the so called support you get from MS is worthless and then even when it's their fault they do nothing then next time your boss will have less incentive
          • Isn't the fact that "you have somebody to blame when things go wrong" a strong selling point for proprietary software?

            In so far that implies a guarantee that things won't go wrong.

            End of the day, my boss doesn't care why something broke. She's just more concerned with why it's still not working.
            • "End of the day, my boss doesn't care why something broke. She's just more concerned with why it's still not working."

              In that case your boss should be perfectly happy with an open source product.
              • In that case your boss should be perfectly happy with an open source product.

                In a pure OSS enviroment, I would agree. However, I have to work with windows. Regardless of where the fault lies, this is problematic on the best of days.
                • "However, I have to work with windows. Regardless of where the fault lies, this is problematic on the best of days."

                  If it's problematic then you need to pick up the phone to MS and complain about how their stuff is not interporating with the rest of the software on your network. Once again your boss picked MS stuff because MS promised them that they would provide support and that he would have somebody to blame when things went wrong.

                  If things are going wrong then you should demand your support. You are pay

    • Re:Which version of Active Directory? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The weblog [livejournal.com] linked from the article explains that Windows Vista will be using a new protocol, SMB2. Apparently the Samba team have already reverse engineered this and its in the technology preview! Impressive if you ask me.
  • On my home network, I have been using Samba as an internal network file system for Linux to Linux networking. I use LDAP as my Database backend, Kerberos as my means of authentication too Samba.

    You see I discovered something about Windows and SMB. Windows Cached its passwords. The passwords were replayed across the network whenever a new socket was opened. Konqueror would not replicate this behavior unless forced to by the KDE Control center. I have a big long thing that describes the whole thing.

    It is not

  • Easy Transition? Excellent. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by foo fighter ( 151863 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @11:28AM (#14557799) Homepage
    This is going to be fantastic for consultants when Win2K Server support ends.

    Many companies are not going to want something that isn't supported and will be looking where they should transition. Savvy consultants can propose a migration to Samba which could provide higher margins than reselling Microsoft solutions -- especially if they aren't a close partner of Microsoft -- and they will be able to fix problems and customize the solution themselves without having to point fingers (they still can, they just don't have to).

    This quote from the article gets me all warm and tingly inside:
    "Tridge demonstrated sucking the life out a Windows 2003 PDC [primary domain controller] in one click, importing all its user and machine information using SWAT."
    "He then restarted [domain server] BIND on his Samba 4 server, changed the server role to PDC ... shut down the Windows PDC and then logged into the domain with an XP client using the new Samba 4 server as the PDC."

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