14 DAY TRIAL // Samba 4.6 has been released today as the new stable series of the popular and open-source re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol for providing fast file and print services on UNIX-like systems.
It's a major release that has been in development for the past few months and includes numerous new features, as well as dozens of improvements over previous versions. Prominent features include support for Kerberos client encryption types via a new parameter, and the ability to upload printer drivers from newer Windows 10 clients.
"Support for uploading printer drivers from newer Windows clients (Windows 10) has been added until our implementation of [MS-PAR] protocol is ready," reads the release notes. "The OS version for the printing server has been increased to announce Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2. If a driver needs a newer version then you should check the smb.conf manpage for details."
Multi-process Netlogon support, AD LDAP, DNS, and CTDB changes
The list of new features and improvements implemented in the major Samba 4.6 release continues with a brand-new option that can be used for owner inheritance, multi-process Netlogon support, new options that will allow users to control TCP ports used for RPC (Remote Procedure Call) services, and performance improvements for AD LDAP.
Various DNS and CTDB (Cluster Trivial Database) improvements have also been added, along with many winbind changes. If you're curious to know what exactly was included, improved or fixed in the Samba 4.6 release, we recommend checking out the full changelog attached at the end of the article for your reading pleasure.
In the meantime, we strongly recommend that you update your operating system to the Samba 4.6 stable series as soon as possible, either by downloading the source tarball from our website and compiling it yourself or by installing the new version from the stable software repositories of your GNU/Linux distribution.