[ Thanks to Jeremy Allisonfor this link. ]
Samba Team Releases Samba 3.6
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August 9th 2011.The Samba Team is proud to announce the release of Samba 3.6, a
major new release of the award-winning Free Software file, print
and authentication server suite for Microsoft Windows (R)
clients.The First Free Software SMB2 Server
===================================Samba 3.6 includes the first Free Software implementation of
Microsoft’s new SMB2 file serving protocol. SMB2 within Samba is
implemented with a brand new asynchronous server architecture,
allowing Samba to display the performance enhancements SMB2 brings
to Microsoft networking technology.Samba’s new SMB2 server has been tested by major vendors and has
been able to double the performance of some network applications
when run in conjunction with Microsoft Windows 7 clients.Future developments of our SMB2 server and client suite, in
combination with our expanding number of SMB2 tests, will keep
driving the performance improvements and improved compatibility
with Microsoft Windows that Samba users have come to expect from
our software.Improved Printing Support =========================
The Samba 3.6 print subsystem has been completely re-written to
use automatically generated remote procedure calls (RPC) and
provides greater compatibility with the Windows SPOOLSS print
subsystem architecture, including export of printer data via
registry interfaces.Samba 3.6 is the first “on the wire” compatible version of the
Microsoft SPOOLSS printing subsystem, and is the basis for our
ongoing work to create an implementation of Microsoft Windows
printing available separately from the Samba file server.Improved Clustered File Server Support
======================================Building on our success as the first commercial implementation
of a clustered SMB/CIFS server, Samba 3.6 provides industry-leading
scalability and performance as a clustered SMB2/SMB/CIFS file
server, using our “clustered tdb” (ctdb) technology – also
available as Free Software.Written and tested to be compatible with most clustered file
systems, both Free Software and proprietary, Samba 3.6 with ctdb
provides a scalable clustered file server solution with full
Windows file sharing semantics.Samba and ctdb has been shipped in production file serving
products for many years, to some of the most demanding customers in
the world.Simplified Identity Mapping ===========================
Samba 3.6 has simplified the complex field of mapping Linux (R)
and UNIX (R) identities to Windows users and groups. Samba 3.6
contains a new implementation of the identity mapping code which
allows automatic allocation of Linux and UNIX identities when
Windows clients connect to a Samba server, even in a clustered file
serving configuration.Greater Reliability ===================
Samba 3.6 has been tested using our widely accepted smbtorture
test suite, created by the Samba Team to test Samba itself and now
used by most of the companies writing SMB2/SMB/CIFS file server
software to test their own products.In addition, Samba is one of eleven open source projects that
leading software integrity vendor Coverity has certified as
“secure” and has reached Coverity “Integrity Rung 2”
certification.A Modular Toolbox For OEM Vendor Needs
======================================As Free Software, Samba 3.6 is the ideal choice for Original
Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to use for their file, print and
authentication products. It is easily integrated into a whole host
of different tasks, and can be customized at will by the vendor to
satisfy their needs.In addition, Samba 3.6 includes a modular “Virtual File System”
(VFS) interface that vendors can use to quickly and efficiently
customize Samba to take advantage of any specific features of their
underlying technology without having to modify any of the core
Samba code. From advanced file systems to network traffic analysis,
the Samba VFS layer allows external code to be easily integrated
with Samba. Example modules are provided as source code for vendors
to customize as they wish.Samba – “Opening Windows to a Wider World”