Archive for the ‘Samba’ Category

The presentation on IPv6 in Windows given by Erion’s David Holder at Google’s IPv6 conference is now available for viewing on YouTube. This talk covers the status of IPv6 on Windows and some key things that you need to know if you are working with IPv6 on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008.

You can view the talk at by clicking here.


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.


At SambaXP I demonstrated a version of Samba4 that was IPv6 enabled. In the attached document I describe how you can IPv6 enable Samba4. This enables IPv6 for the server side of Samba4.

The IPv6 Samba4 patch can be obtained from here (Samba4 IPv6 Server Patch) and the instructions from here (Instructions for Enabling IPv6 in Samba4).


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.


This year I attended SambaXP in Germany to give a presentation on Samba and Vista with IPv6 (see Samba and Vista with IPv6). The talk brought together the two primary specialities of Erion; IPv6 and Windows and Unix/Linux Integration. The presentation was also an opportunity for me to talk about my research into IPv6 on Windows Vista and Windows Longhorn.

Prior to SambaXP, I had spent a lot of time looking at IPv6 in Windows Vista and Windows Longhorn. I will blog about this in more detail at another time as eventually this work will form the basis of a new Windows focussed IPv6 training course. Anyway, I had also attempted to get Samba3 and Samba4 to work with Vista and Longhorn over IPv6. My success was limited for a number of reasons. First of all, IPv6 support in Samba3 and Samba4 is not complete. Despite this, it is still possible to run both as file servers over IPv6 using a couple of different techniques. Again, I will blog about these later!

During SambaXP I worked with a number of the developers discussing how IPv6 should be implemented in Samba and how to resolve a number of the problems stopping IPv6 support being implemented at present.

We achieved a number of key things. First of all, Samba4’s server code was made IPv6 clean. There are still a few things to do, but after a couple of days I was able to make a few simple hacks (which I will also write about later) and Samba4 worked as an IPv6 Active Directory controller and file server over IPv6 for the first time.

Unfortunately, during the testing of this I found that Vista is still unable to join a Samba4 domain over IPv4 or IPv6. The failure mechanism looks the same on both platforms so I am confident that when Vista can join a Samba4 domain over IPv4 it will also work over IPv6.

On the Tuesday evening at the SambaXP conference party, myself and Steve French spent the time working on enabling IPv6 in the Linux CIFS code. The code is largely IPv6 clean, so Steve only had to make a small number of changes in order to make it IPv6 enabled. I then configured a Windows Longhorn Server with a couple of IPv6 shares. Then came an historic moment when Steve pressed the enter key and mounted the first ever CIFS file system over IPv6 on Linux. Steve assures me that the IPv6 changes will be in the mm kernel in the next couple of days. When they are, I will write up what you need to do to try this out yourself.

On the Wednesday I gave my talk. It was good to see the interest in IPv6. One of the main points of my talk, which is worth reiterating here, is that I believe that the deployment of Vista and Longhorn networks will have a huge impact on the up take of IPv6. Vista and Longhorn enable IPv6 by default and use it in preference to IPv4. This is certain to not only increase the awareness of IPv6, but also result in its widespread use. I have talked to a number of Erion’s customers who are looking at deploying Windows Vista and as a result they have begun to look at IPv6. These customers are not companies that I would consider to have any pressing business need to implement IPv6, but despite this they may well implement IPv6 as a result of Vista and Longhorn.

Finally, I was very impressed with the energy and dedication of the Samba team. It was fascinating to see the development process at work and to be involved in making some significant steps forward towards support for IPv6 in Samba.


Erion’s David Holder is presenting a talk next week at this year’s SambaXP in Germany. His talk is entitled Samba and Vista with IPv6.

Given Erion’s longterm involvement in providing IPv6 and Samba training and consultancy it is appropriate that we are now delivering a talk that merges these two important topics.

We will post the talk here after SambaXP and provide you with some background information.