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Although once again online, sambaXP 2024 from April 16-18 was a great event to bring people from all over the world together: Samba developers, users and enthusiasts shared their insights and engaged in constructive discussions despite major time zone differences. A heartfelt thanks to our sponsors—Google, Microsoft, and SerNet—for their continued support, making this event possible.

A total of 20 presentations are now available in the sambaXP 2024 playlist on YouTube and offer material for many hours of exploring the world of Samba. From the Samba team at SerNet, the presentation by Stefan Metzmacher on the SMB Witness Protocol is particularly recommended. In addition, Volker Lendecke compared SMB and NFS, Ralph Böhme dealt with SoS - Scale Out Samba, the comeback of Ceph. Microsoft's special Interoperability Track also provided insights into the development of the SMB protocol.

In his Welcome Note, Jeremy Allison, Chairman of sambaXP, discussed the XZ Utils backdoor and the lessons to be learned from it, for open source projects in general and Samba in particular. Allison: "The data that Samba protects is some of the most valuable data in the world. I'm talking about Samba as an Active Directory domain controller, which essentially contains the crown jewels of an organization. It contains the authentication and passwords of all the users that are in that domain." In light of the XZ-incident, Allison suggested a renewed focus on security protocols within the Samba community. He advocated increased alertness in code review and called for close vetting of contributions, especially from new or lesser-known authors. The existing practice of requiring every code submission to be reviewed by two engineers was highlighted as a crucial safeguard, although he acknowledged the challenges posed by the sheer volume of submissions and the potential for oversight. And, as he noted, "procedures alone cannot protect us from social engineering".

The welcome also served as a call to action for the wider open source community to seek support, "If money helps solve the problem, then we should ask for it." He emphasized the need to look for funding opportunities for critical open source projects – which also applies to Samba.

The sambaXP 2025 is already on the drawing board. Stay up to date on future events and important developments at sambaxp.org.

SerNet will be participating in the Common Europe Congress, set to take place from June 3 to June 6, 2024, in Milan, Italy. The conference is dedicated to IBM Power, IBM i, AIX, and Linux on Power solutions, attracting industry professionals and enthusiasts from around the globe.

At SerNet, we are excited to showcase SAMBA+ and especially SAMBA+ AIX, which offers cutting-edge solutions tailored for these platforms. 

Are you looking to deepen your understanding of Samba solutions or interested in exploring joint development opportunities? Our expert team will be on site throughout the congress. We invite you to pre-schedule a meeting with our sales team to discuss how our services can help optimize your business operations.

For appointments, please reach out to us at contact@remove-this.samba.plus. We look forward to engaging with fellow professionals, sharing insights, and exploring potential collaborations.

The recording of the talk "SMB for Linux with SMB3 POSIX extensions" by Volker Lendecke, longtime member of the Samba core team and co-founder of SerNet, is now available on our YouTube channel. Lendecke gave the talk at FOSDEM 2024 in Brussels, one of the most important conferences in the open source community.

In his presentation, Lendecke discussed the advances in the SMB3 protocol and its impact on network file sharing on Linux. The session offered insights into the SMB3 POSIX extensions that make SMB a real alternative to NFS with all the semantics Linux clients expect. Volker Lendecke not only gave an insight into the current functionalities, but also an outlook on future developments. The discussion also included how these extensions can improve the efficiency and compatibility of file sharing between different operating systems.

The recording of the talk is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the latest developments in the world of network file sharing or who would like to deepen their knowledge of SMB3 and its application to Linux systems.

Watch the full recording here: https://youtu.be/aOVtyU3jz_c to dive into the topic with Volker Lendecke.

On April 16, 2024, the traditional webinar day will take place as part of sambaXP (April 17 and 18), organized by SerNet, and offers Samba enthusiasts a unique opportunity to learn about Samba and exchange ideas with experts. This year, three webinars on various Samba topics will be offered via Zoom. Author Stefan Kania will report on innovations to Function Level 2016, while SerNet AIX expert Björn Jacke will show how to set up Samba on AIX. Claudio J. Concepción Certad is a new addition. For the first time this year, he will be offering a webinar in Spanish.

The following webinars are available:

• Making NFS clusters highly available with CTDB (in English)
  Lecturer: Stefan Kania
• Setting up SAMBA on AIX and picking the low and the higher hanging fruits (in English)
  Lecturer: Björn Jacke (SerNet)
• Cómo configurar un dominio Samba 4 de Active Directory (in Spanish)
  Lecturer: Claudio J. Concepción Certad

All detailed descriptions of the webinar content can be found on the event website https://sambaXP.org. Participation in the webinars is free of charge, only registration on the event page is required.

"Backup of Windows AD and how to migrate it to Samba" was presented by Björn Jacke and Volker Lendecke on December 7, 2023 in the auditorium of the Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The two long-standing members of the Samba team at SerNet and the Samba Core Team contributed the talk to the Adminstammtisch Berlin event series.

The – German only – talk offers the opportunity to benefit from extensive knowledge of migrating and securing Windows Active Directory to Samba: Most Active Directory installations are Windows-based. Samba allows such an AD installation to be backed up using Unix means and the backup then made to run with a Samba DC. This can be useful not only for backups but also for a Windows to Samba migration, which Jacke and Lendecke demonstrated. A recording is available.

They also gave valuable insights into Samba and the SAMBA+ software packages offered by SerNet for various Linux distributions and IBM AIX. The Adminstammtisch Berlin is organized by and for IT professionals who are committed to sharing knowledge and experience and discussing current IT topics.