installing samba4 on debian

[hobuscorpus]

I'm having some trouble installing samba4 on my Debian machine. I've tried following this hxxp://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba4/HOWTO#Step_1:_Download_Samba4

But when I use the git repo method, when I get to [inline]$ make quicktest[/inline] takes a very long time and then returns something like 17 errors.

I don't know too much about git, so I tried downloading their tarball at hxxp://ftp.samba.org/pub/samba/samba4/samba-4.0.0alpha16.tar.gz. The quick test passes with that method, but it looks like the init.d script is missing, and I'm not sure the samba binary is working properly..

~/tmp/samba-4.0.0alpha16/bin# ./samba
Unknown parameter encountered: "announce as"

Does anyone know if there's a way I can use git to backtrack a few commits to where more of the tests are passing? Or where there might be a link to a working install/ fix for debian systems. Thanks!

[fanderal]

Hello and welcome.

There a reason why you want Samba 4.0.0 alpha? Debian doesn't have the latest version but the Samba pkgs in the repository are pretty easy to install with the package manager.

[hobuscorpus]

Thank you for the welcome!

I should start out this post by clarifying that I'm primarily interested in using samba's Active Directory services (eg. ctrl+alt+del logins like at schools aka “Single Sign On”).

I'm hoping to get
1) 4 user profiles for 3 different computers handled all by one central server.
2) Profiles, and roaming profiles for convenient data storage.
3) Just get some fun, low pressure experience for down the road.

On my first attempt, I did install with apt-get, and things were going great, but then when I tried to get my XP machine to use it as it's domain, I ran into some trouble. While Trying to fix it, I came across a rather discouraging quote:

Samba-3 is not, and cannot act as, an Active Directory server. It cannot truly function as an Active Directory PDC. The protocols for some of the functionality of Active Directory domain controllers has been partially implemented on an experimental only basis. Please do not expect Samba-3 to support these protocols. Do not depend on any such functionality either now or in the future. The Samba Team may remove these experimental features or may change their behavior. This is mentioned for the benefit of those who have discovered secret capabilities in Samba-3 and who have asked when this functionality will be completed. The answer is maybe someday or maybe never!

hxxp://samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-HOWTO-Collection/samba-pdc.html#id2562461

When I read that, I decided I had better reset my VM to "pre-samba install" and start over with samba4.

But now later in the game, I'm wondering if I just didn't have a firm enough grasp of to how to configure the server to be joined by XP. I originally didn't have a local DNS server and thus didn't have a fully qualified domain name, which might have been my only problem.

Do you have samba3 configured as an AD Primary Domain Controller by any chance Fanderal?

[HROAdmin26]

Samba 3 cannot act as an Active Directory server. It can act as an NT-style PDC.

Samba 4 is highly experimental. I am not sure why you would want to run it unless you want to *test* some of these new features.

[hobuscorpus]

So just to be uber clarified, that mean samba 3 can't do these things below?

I'm hoping to get
1) 4 user profiles for 3 different computers handled all by one central server.
2) Profiles, and roaming profiles for convenient data storage.

The guy writing the wiki seems pretty enthusiastic about the current samba4 state.

...Samba4 is subjected to an awesome battery of tests on an automated basis, we have found Samba 4.0 to be very stable in it's behavior. However, we still recommend against upgrading production servers from Samba 3.x release to Samba 4.0 alpha at this stage...

And I've got such a miniscule network that it shouldn't be a problem in the event that the system goes bad and I need to migrate all the files back to the windows machines.

[HROAdmin26]

An NT PDC can store/distribute user profiles and do file sharing. You will find more info in the Samba docs.

Samba 4 is alpha code with all that that entails. If this is not a long-term installation, you don't have a problem compiling code that may have a lot of dependencies, and you want to test AD DC functionality, then have at it.

[hobuscorpus]

Thanks for your response. I re-read that section and got a little more out of it (I've never admin`ed an actual windows server, so I'm a little in the dark). Looks like, even with samba3, I will need to buy over 5 client licenses of windows server in order to get the group policies centralized the way I want them. That is a bummer, but I guess that's the way it is for now =/

[fanderal]

Do you have samba3 configured as an AD Primary Domain Controller by any chance Fanderal?

Nope, I don't. For commits info you might check the git packages in the repos, like gitweb or git-gui. You also might wanna check the Experimental repo:

Debian -- Details of package samba4 in experimental

[hobuscorpus]

Nope, I don't. For commits info you might check the git packages in the repos, like gitweb or git-gui.

git instaweb --httpd webrick --port 1234

Holy cow! I had no idea this was here all along! I'll have to git the git method one more shot before I give up.

[HROAdmin26]

Nice snapshots in the experimental repo. If your Debian is up to date, you should be able to add this line to your /etc/apt/sources file:

http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ experimental main

And then:

apt-get update

apt-get install samba4