Releasing Samba 4 [LWN.net]

Releasing Samba 4

Posted Dec 1, 2011 7:40 UTC (Thu) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032)
Parent article: Releasing Samba 4

I've long wanted a lean stand-alone CIFS-file server to run on my 16 MB RAM Router, without the whole baggage that comes with AD, DC, Printing Server, DNS replacement and all the other Windows-technology that I'm not even aware of. Trying to tone smbd down through config.h enough to fit into this kind of restriced space has become an exercise in futility. I haven't heard of ntvfs yet, but that seems to be what I want instead. As such I would very much deplore if it was assimilated into a big monolithic samba4 monster with features that may be necessary if you want to run a enterprise class AD server but that I don't need for my use case.

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Releasing Samba 4

Posted Dec 1, 2011 7:52 UTC (Thu) by abartlet (✭ supporter ✭, #3928) [Link]

One of the important features of the 'master' branch of Samba (which I advocate should be released under Samba 4.0 or some other name) is a new waf-based build system. This build system produces much smaller binaries for both of the file server architectures mentioned in this article.

In terms of the ntvfs file server being part of the Samba4 AD component, it can operate as a standalone server, the AD components only add a small disk overhead in this case.

Andrew Bartlett
Samba Team

Releasing Samba 4

Posted Dec 1, 2011 16:08 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

> I've long wanted a lean stand-alone CIFS-file server to run on my 16 MB RAM Router, without the whole baggage that comes with AD,

I believe that many Microsoft client implementations are broken without some sort of minimal AD support. I don't remember the details anymore.

But regardless, you are going to have a tough time deviating from what Microsoft Windows expect and have it work well.

I would like to have a full fledged 'Unix native' Samba implementation. NFS is terrible.

Is it some kind of "yes, I can do that" project?

Posted Dec 1, 2011 17:47 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Are you doing this to prove that yes, you can fit the beast in a tiny footprint is it just because you feel that beefer router (something like Buffalo WZR-HP-AG300H) is "not worth it"?

If you want to help others then I can only cheer for you, but if not then beefer router looks like saner option (or do you value your time sooo cheap?).