Archive for the ‘Windows Server 2008’ Category

Yesterday I carried out the first every join of a Samba 3.2 server to a Windows domain over IPv6.

At last year’s CIFS workshop at Google, I spoke about IPv6 enabling Samba (see Preparing Samba for Windows Server 2008 and IPv6). I pointed out that IPv6 enabling Samba would be a critical requirement in 2008. Two key factors make IPv6 enabling Samba by 2008 critical. The first is the mandate by the US Federal government for the use of IPv6 by 2008. The second is the imminent release of Windows Server 2008 which uses IPv6 by default.

Jeremy Allison claimed that he could IPv6 enable Samba 3.2 “in a few weeks”. I was sceptical but Jeremy set out and did indeed IPv6 enable Samba 3.2 in a matter of weeks. Since then I have been testing Samba 3.2 against Vista and Windows Server 2008. Amazingly, only a small number of bugs have been found so far. Of these few were actually IPv6 bugs.

Until a few days ago it was not possible to join Samba 3.2 to a Windows Server 2008 domain over IPv4 never mind IPv6. However, the Samba team (Jeremy, Andreas and Gerry) made a number of patches which eventually made it possible to join over IPv4. All that remained was to test it over IPv6. Once I had tested a join over IPv4 my first test over IPv6 was also successful. This is a major milestone for Samba. It will make it possible for organisations that have to move to IPv6 to continue to use Samba in their networks. It will also allow NAS box vendors to IPv6 enable their products.

Naturally, further testing is required. Furthermore, Samba 3.2 is still to be released for production use. However, I am now confident that an IPv6 enabled Samba will be available early this year. For those who need to test Samba over IPv6 you can begin testing now using the test tree of Samba 3.2. Please let me know if you have any questions.


At the recent CIFS Engineering Workshop at Google, Erion’s David Holder carried out the first ever Windows Server 2008 join of a Samba4 domain over IPv6.

Previously, whilst Samba4 listened on IPv6, only limited functionality worked over IPv6. Whilst file sharing worked over IPv6, many other operations did not. A hacked version of Samba4 now allows Windows Server 2008 to join and function in a Samba4 domain over IPv6. Much work is still to be done before Samba4 is production code, but significant progress has been made towards an IPv6 version of Samba.


This week Google are playing hosts to the CIFS Engineering Workshop. This event brings together in one place the developers of many CIFS client and server applications.

Erion’s David Holder gave a presentation entitled Preparing Samba for Windows Server 2008 and IPv6. This presentation covers how code can be ported to IPv6 and outlined the specific steps required to IPv6 enabled Samba3 and Samba4.


Erion’s David Holder has written a short how-to for those who wish to use the Linux CIFS client over IPv6. These instructions allow you to mount CIFS shares over IPv6 from Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and other IPv6 enabled CIFS servers.


Microsoft’s Sam Ramji interviewed Erion’s David Holder for a podcast on IPv6 and Samba. Full details can be found at http://port25.technet.com/archive/2007/05/31/samba-ipv6-and-windows-linux-interoperability-sam-interviews-dr-david-holder.aspx.


The First Ever IPv6 Linux CIFS MountAt the SambaXP 2007 conference Steve French and David Holder IPv6 enabled the Linux CIFS client. At the SambaXP party on the Tuesday evening they successfully connected the Linux CIFS client to Windows Server Longhorn over IPv6 for the first time.

David Holder will be publishing instructions for testing the Linux CIFS client over IPv6. Steve has already posted an IPv6 enabled version. See http://lists.samba.org/archive/linux-cifs-client/2007-April/001924.html.