The SerNet Samba team has published SAMBA+ 4.23 packages for a wide range of SUSE and Red Hat platforms as well as for Debian GNU/Linux and Ubuntu. SAMBA+ 4.23 comes with major improvements for secure file sharing, monitoring, and interoperability. As always, we strongly recommend checking the release notes before upgrading.
With this new release, Samba 4.22 enters maintenance mode. Samba 4.21 is now in security fixes only mode. With SAMBA+ 4.23, we are also discontinuing SAMBA+ 4.20. The 4.20 release series was the last one we built and provide for Debian buster (10) and Ubuntu bionic (18.04). If there is still a need for SAMBA+ 4.20 on these platforms, we may be able to provide packages on request. The effort required will then be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
New in Samba 4.23: Prometheus monitoring & SMB over QUIC
One of the most important milestones is full support for SMB over QUIC, completed as part of the STA-funded development project. QUIC enables encrypted, low-latency access to Samba servers over the Internet – effectively turning Samba into a secure “SMB VPN” for mobile users and remote work scenarios, without the need for a traditional VPN infrastructure.
Another brand-new feature is the smb_prometheus_endpoint, which was developed by Volker Lendecke and Ralph Böhme from the SerNet Samba Team. This optional service exports Samba performance metrics in a Prometheus-compatible format, enabling seamless integration with Prometheus and Grafana dashboards. Administrators can now monitor Samba health and performance in real time, with standard tooling.
Additional enhancements in Samba 4.23 include:
- SMB3 UNIX Extensions enabled by default for better POSIX interoperability.
- Modernized write timestamp handling, consistent with current Windows servers.
- Improved samba-tool domain backup --no-secrets to reliably exclude confidential attributes.
- Per-share profiling stats for detailed performance analysis in complex setups.
- CTDB tunables in directories, giving more flexibility in clustered environments.
Upgrading
Instructions for package access and upgrading are available in the SAMBA+ How-to collection. If you are upgrading from a SAMBA+ version older than 4.22 and use your own or third-party scripts that rely on Samba’s Python modules, you must install the sernet-samba-python3 package after upgrading to SAMBA+ 4.23 on Debian or Ubuntu systems. RHEL and SUSE-based systems are not affected.
For details on SAMBA+ pricing:
- USD Pricing: US SAMBA+ Shop
- EUR Pricing: World SAMBA+ Shop
For further questions, contact the SAMBA+ Team.
