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Samba 2.2.0 Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tue Apr 17, 2001 04:42 PM
from the look-what-we-got-kiddies dept.
Software Linux
Jeremy Allison wrote in to tell us that Samba 2.2.0 has been released. Of course, I'm sure everyone reading this knows what that means already, so I've attached the press release. Mostly this looks like its stuff for compatibility with Windows "We just changed enough to break everyone else" 2000's implementation of the protocol. Congrats to everyone involved with what is unquesitonably among the most important server apps on Linux.

Samba 2.2.0 - Powering the next generation of Network Attached Storage.

17 April 2001.

The Samba Team is proud to announce a new major release of Samba, version 2.2.0. This release includes significant feature enhancements for Samba, and sets the standard for UNIX® and Microsoft Windows® integration.

Enhancements include :

oIntegration of server terminated leases (Windows "oplocks") with UNIX NFS sharing (Linux 2.4 kernel and IRIX only). Complete data and locking integrity when sharing files between UNIX and Windows.

oAbility to act as an authentication source for Windows 2000® and Windows NT® clients, allowing savings on the purchase of Microsoft® Client Access Licenses.

oFull support for the automatic downloading of Windows 2000 and Windows NT printer drivers, providing the first full implementation of the Windows NT point-and-print functionality independent of Microsoft code.

oUnification of Windows 2000 and Windows NT Access control lists (ACLs) with UNIX Access control lists. Allow Windows clients to directly manipulate UNIX Access control entries as though they were Windows ACLs.

oSingle sign-on integration using the winbind server (available separately). Allow UNIX servers to use Windows 2000 and Windows NT Domain controllers as a user and group account server. Manage all user and group accounts from a single source.

oMicrosoft Distributed File System® (DFS) support. Samba 2.2.0 can act as a DFS server in a Microsoft network.

oShare level security setting. Allow security on Samba shares to be set by Microsoft client tools.

oMany other feature enhancements and bug fixes.

About Samba

Samba is an Open Source/Free Software implementation of the Microsoft CIFS/SMB protocols for UNIX systems. In development for ten years, Samba is considered to be the reference implementation of the CIFS/SMB protocol for UNIX systems. Samba test tools are used by all the CIFS/SMB vendors to test and fix their protocol implementations.

Samba is currently used in Network attached storage (NAS) and other products from the following vendors (Note: this does not imply endorsement by these vendors, please contact the vendor marketing departments separately for comments).

IBM®, SGI® (Samba for IRIX), Sun Microsystems ®(Cobalt Qube), Hewlett Packard® (CIFS/9000), VERITAS®, VA Linux Systems®, REALM Information Technologies ®, Network Concierge®, Procom ® and many others.

In addition, Samba is shipped as a standard part of Linux® offerings from Linux vendors such as Red Hat®, Caldera®, SuSE®, Mandrake®, TurboLinux ® and others.

Samba is being used worldwide to solve the problem of integrating hetrogeneous networks by corporations such as Agilent Technologies ®, CISCO Systems ®, and many others in addition to educational establishments and individuals

Best of all Samba is an Open Source/Free software project, available under the GNU GPL license meaning that source code for Samba is freely available for anyone to modify and customize.

Code from the Samba Team and individuals around the world has been integrated and tested to create Samba. In addition the following corporations have made significant donations of code, effort, testing facilities and support to make this release possible :

Linuxcare (now TurboLinux), VA Linux Systems, Caldera, SGI, Hewlett Packard, VERITAS, IBM.

This new release may be downloaded from our Web site at :

http://www.samba.org

For press enquiries about this release please contact either Jeremy Allison (jra@samba.org), Andrew Tridgell (tridge@samba.org) or John Terpstra (jht@samba.org).

Samba - the SOURCE for Windows Networking !

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  • Wha? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Mostly this looks like its stuff for compatibility with Windows."

    Umm...no shit. Isn't that the purpose of Samba?

  • Flamebait (Score:3)

    by On Lawn (1073) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @02:12PM (#284764) Journal
    one man's flame is another man's fire...

    His comments would have been more tempered if he said "environment they are used to" instead of "more stable, [yada]".

    But that wouldn't be saying anything different.

    /me ducks

    Seriously though, having moved from a Linux environment to a Windows recently, I can attest that Windows is more stable these days than it was. But check this out, I just had to visit a company yesterday that I installed a samba server in over a year and a half ago.

    I had never had to visit them since the time I installed it, until now that they are having hardware problems with the case its housed in. They aren't Linux gurus so I can attest that they haven't touched it.

    I wonder if anyone can say they have a NT box in a production commercial environment that they haven't had to touch in 18 months, nay not even a reboot.

    On my linux box at home, if my wife does something strange, like run tuxracer even though we don't have 3d acceloration, I can log in from work and fix it for her, while she is logged in and without stepping on what she is doing.

    I know there is remote admin tools for NT and 2000, but honestly, they aren't as powerful and/or they interupt what the user is doing.

    So, I hope this is more insiteful and evenhanded, but I don't need any more karma.


    ~^~~^~^^~~^
  • I compiled it last night on Solaris 7, and it was a nice, clean build. Good work, guys!
  • Have you ever seen an M$ PDC replicate?

    All I know is when my former boss decided that NT was the way to go, one day we had just one NT machine and next week there were about 8 of them.

    Something was replicating!!! :)
  • An interesting (and important) point, but ultimately a little off. Most linux distros also support unattended installation, but how many file servers do you really need? SAMBA being a primarily server-side app, it doesn't make much sense to do automated installs.
    On top of that, administering a Windows network takes time, skill, and education, just as much as a UNIX network. MS talks about lower TCO if you just buy Windows, but that hasn't been borne out at my job.
  • they will change the License for W2K cals.

    They did the same thing when puting fast track or web site pro web server on NT Workstation was cheaper than getting NT Server + IIS for 'free'. They changed NT Worstation licence to say you couldn't have more than 10 tcp/ip clients at a time.

    doh, that's what's driving WinXP.

    -Peace
    Dave

  • Since we're all in a group hug now :-)

    We (at work) have been using Samba for over a year now to serve a small workgroup of NT users. None of us (least of all me, the default sysadmin) are experienced NT or Windows users.

    We recently switched our main server from an old (10 years?) SGI Indigo2 XL to a new Dell server - Samba 2.0.6 to 2.0.7. The process of compiling, installing and configuring Samba was straightforward and I can safely say that Samba is one of the most impressive and useful pieces of software I have ever used. Well done and many thanks to all responsible!

    I should also put in a good word for O'Reilly for allowing the free distribution of the 'Using Samba' book - invaluable.

    Maintaining mixed unix/NT can be a real chore (and I won't even mention Clearcase), but Samba has made it work beautifully. It's a pity that we also ended up with a Syntax TAS (Totalnet Advanced Server) system - purely for Clearcase ... it 'works' (well, actually it does), 'guaranteed support', 'recommended' ... :-/

    At some point in the future, when I have time, I'd like to shift Clearcase, and it's SMB appendage TAS, to a Linux/Samba server - just to show it can be done. Then I could get rid of the Ultra5! Which would make me very happy :-)

    Now if only there was an easy/cheap way to manage unix and NT users/groups from a unix machine, minus any NT server ofcourse.

    Cheers!

    --
    Alastair
    London UK

  • Pam_smb is good (we used it at my old work to save an extra password; we used Samba to share files from Unix to NT and didn't want another password), but you do have to create a Unix user (eg, under NIS) as it needs that information for home directory, uid, gid etc.

    Winbind sounds like it's the solution to that problem...
    --

  • As Mr. Allison previously noted, the ability to do this is built into the latest Samba. Just FYI, it is possible to do NetBios name resolution without Samba on the unix machine.

    This long document [microsoft.com] on MSDN (scroll about 1/3 the way down to "Enabling WINS lookup") discusses setting up Microsoft's DNS server to use WINS to resolve names to any client that can point to a DNS server, including those which can't run Samba (OS/400, etc.) I've used it at work for a year with few problems.

    Of course, you have to run Windows as your DNS server, which you may have technical or perhaps theological objections to. However, you can always have MS DNS forward on to your BIND server if it doesn't find the record in WINS, thus allowing you the best of both worlds (that's what we do.)
  • But that's not the point of Samba. Want directory services ? Use OpenLDAP. Want Kerberos ? Use MIT Kerb5 or Heimdal. Want DNS ? Use bind. Want DHCP ? Use a dhcp daemon (University of Washington I think). Want Terminal Services ? Use X, or vnc.

    Are you getting the picture ? :-).

    You're comparing Samba, which is just the Windows file/print/authentication service for Windows clients on UNIX, with an entire Win2k/NT load.

    You should be comparing a full UNIX/Linux distro. containing Samba to do a fair comparison.

    Regards,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.
  • Check out sybase tools. MS-SQL server is wire compatible with Sybase (it uses TDS - Tabular Data Stream protocol. Proprietary though :-( ).

    Standard Linux sybase tools should talk to SQL server no problem (at least they used to). I depended on this in a previous life :-).

    Regards,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.
  • I remember aquaplaning on that bloody thing. Nearly killed me :-). God I *hate* driving on the M1....

    Have they knocked down the cooling towers yet ?
    :-).

    Jeremy.
  • Ah. You must be a southern git then :-).

    Jeremy.
  • Already included in the 2.2.0 Samba. Look for the nsswitch "wins" module. I forgot to mention it (we've addeda *lot* of stuff :-).

    Cheers,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.

    BTW: I just uploaded the Red Hat rpms for 2.2.0 for Red Hat 6.2 and 7.0 intel onto samba.org.
  • Oh - a black pudding muncher..... :-). We'll, we all have our crosses to bear... :-).

    Jeremy.

  • Re:Aussies (Score:3)

    by Jeremy Allison - Sam (8157) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @01:18PM (#284783) Homepage
    I'm not a bloody Aussie, I've never even *been* to bloody Australia :-). I'm from *Sheffield* (where they do "the Full Monty" :-) :-).

    You're thinking of *Andrew*. He's a bloody Aussie !

    Bloody foreigners, not knowing the difference between Australia and the UK, I dunno... mumble, grumble....

    :-).

    Cheers,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.
  • This is why winbind is so useful for creating Samba appliances. No more local users or groups, just drop the thing into the NT domain and go....

    Cheers,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.
  • Actually, the line I use when developing Samba is :

    -Wall -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-qual

    to get *really* medieval on the code... (with apologies to "Pulp Fiction" :-) :-). Plus we run Samba though the IRIX compiler (which is also very, very picky....).

    Cheers,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.
  • A "braindamage implementation issue" is a printer driver server design that expects to be able to run printer driver binaries *ON THE SERVER THAT IS SERVING THEM OUT TO CLIENTS*. If you think back to the dim and distant past, when NT ran on other things than an Intel CPU then you'll realize how broken this is.....

    Of course that's been fixed by that "portable" OS, Windows 2000 :-).

    As Samba runs on other things than x86 boxes this is braindamage for us...

    Regards,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.
  • It means it's not completely a PDC, 'cos it doesn't do replication or BDC Stuff yet - but it works well enough to put Windows 2000 or Windows NT clients into a Samba hosted domain, and have people log in and authenticate against it, and download profiles from it.

    For many small sites this is all they need - not the full PDC stuff.

    That's why I didn't say PDC, but used the phrase "authentication source".

    Cheers,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.
  • 9x clients were already supported by the 2.0.x codebase. They're also supported in the same way that W2k/NT servers do it in this new release.

    I didn't mention it 'cos we already had that functionality - so it wasn't news :-).

    We've now got a *complete* (modulo bugs and one braindamage implementation issue, hang out on samba-technical@samba.org for details) implementation of W2k/NT point and print. That *includes* W9x driver download.

    Cheers,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.

  • ditto.

    YES, it takes more time (generally) to set up something under *nix than it does similar Windows services. However, would you rather put your budget into hiring a $90k admin who knows what s/he's doing, or into hiring a $50k admin who may or may not + $40k for licenses?
  • Jesus, what an arsehole.
  • o Ability to act as an authentication source for Windows 2000® and Windows NT® clients, allowing savings on the purchase of Microsoft® Client Access Licenses.

    Can someone explain this? Does this version of Samba in essence emulate Microsoft's licensing agent, allowing free use of features that Microsoft wants you to pay for, or does this mean something else?

    Sounds like something that could result in a tidal wave of lawsuits from Redmond.

  • Re:"authentication source"? (Score:3)

    by jms (11418) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @02:40PM (#284796)
    Someone needs to make an XBOX DVD with a ready-to-run SAMBA server on it. Pay $300.00, Plug XBOX into network, insert DVD, cancel
    order for NT server.
  • Use an automounter. Most modern distros (such as Mandrake 7.2, RedHat 6.x, etc.) include one.

    Non root users can mount SMB shares all day long. The old smbmnt isn't needed...the new smbmount is called by the mount command ... the automounter runs as root, so there is no need to give users a SUID binary.
  • Windows clients typically authenticate against an Windows Server (be it NT4 or 2000). Each individual client connecting to the Server must have a Client Access License (CAL). Windows 2000 Server comes bundled with 5 CALs, and Windows 2000 Advanced Server comes with 25 CALs. Additional CALs can be purchased seperately. The important point is that CALs are only required if you want to connect to a Windows NT4/2000 Server.

    For example, if you plan on having a network of 20 Windows 2000 Professional workstations connected to a single Windows 2000 Server, in addition to the 20 licenses for Windows 2000 Professional and 1 copy of Windows 2000 Server, you would need to purchase an additional 15 CALs.

    By providing you with free server software, Samba eliminates the need to purchase CALs, as they are server-specific. In the above example, the customer would only need the 20 Windows 2000 Professional licenses.

    WiPEOUT

  • ACLs on Linux need patch. (Score:3)

    by eMBee (27441) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @12:49PM (#284808) Homepage
    Unification of Windows 2000 and Windows NT Access control lists (ACLs) with UNIX Access control lists. Allow Windows clients to directly manipulate UNIX Access control entries as though they were Windows ACLs.
    to make this work on linux you need to apply the ACL patches [bestbits.at] to your kernel.

    greetings, eMBee.
    --

  • This might be a stupid (inexperienced question), but am I the only one who thinks it would be very useful to have Linux's hostname resolving scheme support Netbios name resolution? e.g. to be able to specify for example in /etc/host.conf something like "order hosts, netbios, bind" or something like that. So that typing (for example) "ping foo" would allow for a Netbios-named PC on the LAN called "foo"'s IP to be found, if it isn't in /etc/hosts, for example. We have a WinNT DHCP server on the LAN, and a Linux server that does some other stuff, and entirely Windows clients, so the Windows clients all get "random" IP addresses on startup. It's a pain to keep /etc/hosts up to date under this scheme, and its also a pain to use IP reservations for every client.

    Apart from this probably esoteric setup, I'm sure there are many other possible useful applications for this to be supported (e.g. to recreate something like Windows Network Neighbourhood - how does the new KDE do this?). Seems to me "Linux as a workstation" could benefit seriously from this. You don't really want to be going around explaining the "smbclient" command parameters to every employee - in Windows this stuff "just works, point and click", at least from a user perspective.

    Is something like this planned? Is it something that would perhaps be easier to support with the planned LibSMB?

    Is this already possible and I just don't know how (or haven't tried recently)? Admittedly its been at least 6 months to a year since I last looked at this stuff. Sorry if it's a stupid question.

    -----

  • Let's see, you're a company with 60 Windows 2000 Servers in multiple departments scattered around the world. What would you rather have, the management of dealing with server-based concurrency licenses for each server (gee, does this server have 25 or 10 or 5?) or simply buying a CAL for every client you have, and just buying your 60 server licenses?

    However you've simply replaced dealing with server based licences with complexities of client based licencing.
    The approach of just buying one for each client is fine so long as your network were never to change after that. It's all too possible for someone to forget the CAL with a new machine. Also are they technically transferable? IIRC you need different CAL's for NT4 and 2000 too.
    Let alone that both methods are pure money making schemes of software companies. With a per server setup there is at least the possibility that different numbers of licences could actually alter the way things work.
  • SAMBA will provide the most basic of directory services. Nothing like what NDS or Active Directory provide. Not to mention the other native services that Windows 2000 provides that Samba doesn't (IIS, RRAS, Media Services, Terminal Services, DHCP, DNS, PKI, etc.)

    Because it dosn't need to. Samba is written primarily for unix, which takes a modular aproach, unlike the Windows "plate of sphagetti" design.
    For most of the list you have a quite a choice which program to use, with some things such as MTA, you have a huge choice.
  • You have to consider the cost of employing someone with the required skills to do this versus the cost of a Windows license and a windows installation.

    You still need a skilled person to install Windows. Especially given the kind of documentation MS puts out.

    Windows supports unattended installations which can be initiated with little or no effort, provided the configuration settings are correctly specified.

    However it can take a lot of effort to get these configurations right in the first place. As well as messy mistakes to clean up if they are wrong.
    Also how do you get any version of NT to automatically create user shares. Do you know that NT automatically shares it's whole filesystem, by default too. In most cases you don't want this.
  • The problem RIS solves is how to make installing an OS image (inluding applications)

    The "including applications" can also be interpeted as "Windows can't cope with having it's apps on a network drive very well" :)

    So when a user messes up their PC,

    So even with Windows 2000 the end user can still mess with things only the admin should really be able to touch?
    If something the user did means you have to reinstall the whole OS then something is seriously broken somewhere.
  • Run cat /etc/passwd | mksmbpasswd.sh > /etc/smbpasswd

    This might work on the simplist of setups. But it dosn't scale to many servers using NIS. Which is an area where the samba docs are unclear.
  • In some ways it's not oracle but in other ways it's better then oracle. It's missing some "enterprise" features like clustering, replication etc but it does have unlimited row sizes, a fantastic rule system, user loadable languages and my fave being able to define your own operators and aggregate functions. Once you use one of these things you will scratch your head and ask why anybody would pay a hundred thousand dollars for a database that does not do it. OTOH if you really need those enterprise features you could probably pay for them. For anybody else it's like butter.
  • freetds is a good effort but it's not suitable for mission critical web sites.
  • tds support in sql7 is a bit flaky and worse in w2K. MS is going to ditch TDS support soon because they don't like the fact you can connect to sql server from linux/apacha/php (plays nice with others!). They want to force you to use windows and ODBC/ADO/OLEDB or whatever their alphabet soup of data access technology of the day is.
  • you still need unix ODBC drivers. Perl's DBI uses freetds so unless you want to pay for an ODBC deriver from merant (thousands of dollars!) you are screwed (freetds is not mission critical).
  • " It would be very hard for them to change something and not have it affect a lot of implementations. "

    why would it be hard for them? Breaking implementation would help MS because it would prevent people from buying non MS products. MS has a history of backstabbing companies that it partnered with. Did they all find god all of a sudden or something?
  • Hey but I can set up samba in under 30 minutes!
  • Jeremy,

    I know this will happen `when its done', but what's the currentstatus of BDC / PDC functionality (inc. replication). What's a credible date to think that Samba should be capable of this? Are we talking within six months, a year, or more?

    Mike

  • new section (Score:3)

    by po_boy (69692) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @12:55PM (#284827) Homepage
    Also, notice that this is hanging out in the elite new developers [slashdot.org] section!
  • My mistake, good job guys.

  • Point and click printing (Score:4)

    by 0xA (71424) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @01:18PM (#284832)
    Full support for the automatic downloading of Windows 2000 and Windows NT printer drivers, providing the first full implementation of the Windows NT point-and-print functionality independent of Microsoft code.


    This is a huge acomplishment. Using samba's print services has always been a bit of a PITA in large networks. You get a print spooler that doesn't hang when you look at it funny but you had to install drivers for each printer on the workstations. Micrsoft's server products will automagicly provide a driver for clients when you connect to the shared printer, now samba does it too.

    Hats of to Jeremy and the Samba team, this is a great feature.

    Would have been kind of nice to see 9x clients supported too though.
  • And if any slashdot editors are reading this, the colors in this section absolutely freakin' rule. Much better than YRO, for instance, which has always made me feel like puking.

  • Other Samba News (Score:3)

    by istartedi (132515) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @01:57PM (#284860) Journal

    Fact:

    http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010417/0071.html [yahoo.com]

    Opinion:

    Slashdot mentioned VA Linux in this article. This makes it more difficult to complain about the lack of "full disclosure". On the other hand, important material information is still missing.

    It seems that in an effort to appear unbiased, the editors are reluctant to post anything about VA Linux at all, even when it is perfectly legitimate to do so. VA Linux hiring top level Samba developers is major news. Don't be ashamed, be proud!

    In their effort to avoid being perceived as a PR arm of VA Linux, they are being somewhat evasive and this is backfiring.

  • Let's not forget our friends (Score:4)

    by AintTooProudToBeg (187954) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @01:32PM (#284882)
    the most important server apps on Linux

    And BSD
    And AIX
    And Solaris
    And Irix
    ...

  • Re:"authentication source"? (Score:4)

    by hammock (247755) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @03:23PM (#284900) Homepage
    Does this version of Samba in essence emulate Microsoft's licensing agent, allowing free use of features that Microsoft wants you to pay for, or does this mean something else?
    Sounds like something that could result in a tidal wave of lawsuits from Redmond.

    Funny you should mention this situation. Are you familiar with Gateway Services for Netware included with Windows 2000 Server? What this allows you to do is set up a Novell server using IPX/SPX, connect a Win2k server to it with that service running, and an entire Win2k TCP/IP network of Windows clients can use the Novell server and only have to buy a single Netware license, since it's only using a single connection (the Win2k Server). Think of it as NAT for a Novell Server.

    A tidal wave of lawsuits? I don't see any from Novell against Microsoft, why should Microsoft care if Samba beat them at thier own (dirty) game?

    "Why didn't I join Microsoft? [LAUGHTER]"

  • Samba absolutely rules (Score:3)

    by nate1138 (325593) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @12:47PM (#284910)
    This has to be one of the coolest bits of software for *nix. Especially with the ability to act as a PDC, it allows an option of what server you want to use to manage your windows clients. I'll go where I damn well please today, thanks.

  • Re:Cost (Score:3)

    by Guppy06 (410832) on Tuesday April 17 2001, @01:24PM (#284922) Journal
    "the skill and effort required to install and configure it is not."

    ... but still less than the corresponding costs of a Win 2k Server liscence (any flavor) and all the corresponding CALs. The larger your organization, the more CALs you'll need to buy to support Win 2k Server, and the more tempting it will be to use Samba instead.

    Besides, installation of components in Linux is simpler than Windows (no rebooting), and the know-how needed to properly configure it will take an hour, maybe two to glean from the HOWTOs.

    "You have to consider the cost of employing someone with the required skills"

    ... or you can be smart enough to hire someone who can learn the skills

    Besides, the box of a Win 2k implementation might as well say "MCSE Not Included" right on it. At least with Linux you won't have to spend $1000's for the software on top of IT salaries

    "Windows supports unattended installations"

    ... as do several Linux distros...

    "provided the configuration settings are correctly specified."

    Like I said, "MCSE Not Included."

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