Samba 4 is nothing short of amazing. Until recently I was familiar with earlier versions and had done nothing more than mounted cross-OS volumes (to create simple white-label NFS storage devices, for example). Version 4 has hacked some major portions of the Windows kernel functionality and re-worked them in Python.
For example, did you know that a Linux server can be an Active Directory Domain Controller? Install samba-tool and run the following command (assuming your domain already exists):
# samba-tool join MY.DOMAIN DC -Uadministrator@my.domain --realm=MY.DOMAIN
Use the 'samdump' operator for Kerberos data to standard output:
# samba-tool samdump
In no way would I recommend this for outside of a testing / development environment - there are some key differences between samba 4 AD and real AD (one issue documented so far is that samba 4 uses some NT 4 notions that Windows simply emulates in recent versions, for example primary and secondary domain controller relationships.
In any event, I can see some use for testing for example being able to closely integrate Linux-based network monitoring tools without cygwin.
For example, did you know that a Linux server can be an Active Directory Domain Controller? Install samba-tool and run the following command (assuming your domain already exists):
# samba-tool join MY.DOMAIN DC -Uadministrator@my.domain --realm=MY.DOMAIN
Use the 'samdump' operator for Kerberos data to standard output:
# samba-tool samdump
In no way would I recommend this for outside of a testing / development environment - there are some key differences between samba 4 AD and real AD (one issue documented so far is that samba 4 uses some NT 4 notions that Windows simply emulates in recent versions, for example primary and secondary domain controller relationships.
In any event, I can see some use for testing for example being able to closely integrate Linux-based network monitoring tools without cygwin.