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Active Directory comes to Linux with Samba 4

Computerworld has a great read about Samba 4 and how it'll improve AD integration of Linux and MS AD. Although it's been possible for a long time, bundled SAMBA version in distos can run behind the main development line and become a pain when trying to read documentation and configure older versions. SAMBA4 will run most things out of the box:
Bartlett admitted Samba has a "nasty" reputation for being "impossible to configure" and believes Samba 4 should "just work" without administrators needing to read through documentation first.

"For example, in Samba 4 we generate the DNS configuration and have an optional OpenLDAP backend and we have configured this as we know how Samba needs this setup."

Over the past year Samba 4 has added multi-master replication leveraging OpenLDAP, making Samba no longer a single-server implementation.

"Our users have also demonstrated how smart card logins work. I barely had to do anything in Samba 4 to get this to work. There is support for group policy as Windows clients are impossible to manage without it."


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