Samba 4 Alpha is Out!!!
The Alpha version of Samba 4 is now available. I installed the last technical preview of Samba 4, but never really got around to testing it. I’ve been pretty busy. When I setup the servers recently, I created several empty partitions that I can use to add more VM’s. So I’m thinking I can setup a Samba 4 VM on the server. It should perform better than the VM I was running on my laptop. I’m eager to see AD working on a Linux server!!
According to the WHATSNEW.txt file, some of the features that now work in alpha one that didn’t work in the last technical preview include:
Group Policy Support!!!
MMC Support: We can now use AD Users and Computers
There are of course several other changes, but these two will make a HUGE difference when supporting Windows clients with a *nix server.
Some things that don’t work:
No printing support
Samba 4 works best as a PDC, and doesn’t support being a domain member very well
Apparently managing groups still needs some work
If your clocks aren’t in sync you’ll get some Kerberos errors
So it still needs some work, but I’m VERY excited!!! If everything works the way the Samba development team plans for it to I believe this will go a long ways in making Linux more of an appealing server OS for all those Windows shops out there. If I get a chance to play with it I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.