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The program for this year's sambaXP May 4-6, 2021 is online. It is the 20th conference in this series and, like last year, will again take place purely virtually via Zoom. The agenda is filled with exciting talks for developers and users. Tickets can be booked via the conference website at https://sambaXP.org. Participation in sambaXP and the IO Lab is free of charge.

The sambaXP 2021 is sponsored by Google, Microsoft and SerNet.

sambaXP 2021 workshops and lectures

The traditional workshop day on May 4th will again kick off sambaXP. This year Stefan Kania will deal with the topic "Setting up Samba as a print server" from 3 pm to 9:30 pm CEST. The participation fee for this is 50 euros. A free two-hour workshop on "Integrating SAMBA+ AIX into an existing AD domain" will be offered by Björn Jacke from SerNet.

To enable as many people as possible worldwide to participate, the presentations will also start at 3 pm (CEST) on May 5. Nadine Dreymann from the organizing committee of SerNet: "Last year we saw excellent results with the virtual conference and were able to bring participants and speakers from different time zones together."  Jeremy Allison, chairman of sambaXP, kicks things off with his talk on using samba code in Google Chromebooks.  This year's topics include development insights such as "Samba AD DC Cockpit UI" and "Reverse engineering the Windows SMB server," as well as application experiences "Troubleshooting clustered Samba in Enterprise environments" and "Experience running a clustered Samba gateway for CERNBox." 

Among the speakers, SerNet's Samba team is also represented with current topics: 

• Stefan Metzmacher: Samba Multi-Channel/io_uring Status Update.
• Ralph Böhme: The New VFS 
• Volker Lendecke: Socket activation for Samba's RPC services

Details on all presentations can be found on the conference page.

SMB Interoperability Lab 

A Microsoft-sponsored SMB Interoperability Lab (IO Lab) will also be held online from Wednesday to Friday (May 5, 3 pm to May 7, 9 pm CEST). In the IO Lab, participants* will collaboratively test their implementations of SMB3, identify and troubleshoot issues in a collaborative environment.  SMB implementations that are still in the development phase are also welcome. The IO Lab is sponsored by Microsoft and conducted in Microsoft Teams.

As part of sambaXP 2021 an SMB Interoperability Lab (IO Lab) will take place online from Wednesday to Friday (May 5th 3:00 pm to 7th 9:00 pm). During the lab participants work together and test, identify and fix bugs in a collaborative setting. This IO Lab is sponsored and featured by Microsoft.

The virtual sambaXP 2021 itself is set for May 4 to 6. Tickets are available on the conference website https://sambaxp.org, participation in sambaXP as well as the IO Lab is free of charge. The call for papers is also still open.

The purpose of this IO Lab is for vendors to bring their implementations of SMB3 to test, identify, and fix bugs in a collaborative setting with the goal of providing a forum in which companies can develop interoperable products. The 2021 SMB3 IO Lab will be held online using a virtual private network, creating a collaborative framework for testing.  The participants of the IO Lab work together to define the testing process, assuring that objectives are accomplished.

The IO Lab offers access to:

• The latest Windows client and server software from Microsoft, including test suites that help verify interoperability on various features of SMB protocols
• Technical support from SMB engineers to look at traces and help with diagnosing problems
• IO Lab participants are covered by a non-disclosure agreement and access is restricted to registrants only

Please register if you are interested in attending and see the agenda for upcoming new details during the next weeks.

Note from the Organizer

If you are reluctant to participate because you feel that your SMB implementation is "not ready", you should still participate! The SMB Interoperability Lab is also a development opportunity, not just a testing opportunity. Implementations still in development are encouraged to participate.  It's a great opportunity to get help and learn from the experts!

In his sambaXP 2020 talk Douglas Bagnall (Catalyst) illustrates the improvements for Samba achieved by the transition to Python 3.  Bagnall is located in Wellington / New Zealand and member of the international Samba team.

Abstract

Samba, particularly the AD part, is riddled with Python. The transition from Python 2 to Python 3 was painful. Now that is over and we have the sudden benefit from a decade of language and library development. Some of the changes are actually quite useful, including an improved debugging infrastructure and built-in asynchronous concepts.

About the "sambaXP 2020 Retrospective"

In this series we will present recordings of the sambaXP 2020 in the coming month. The 19th edition of the international conference on the open source software Samba took place from 26 - 28 May 2020 for the first time exclusively in digital form. Due to the changed event format and the use of an online conference platform, organizer SerNet is able to offer all talks as videos for viewing (link).

For the 20th time SerNet organizes the Samba eXPerience (sambaXP), the conference around the open source software Samba – once again in 2021 as a digital event. From May 4 to 6, users from all over the world will meet. Tickets are now available on the conference website https://sambaxp.org, participation in sambaXP is free of charge. The call for papers has also started!

Due to the pandemic situation, the sambaXP organizing team is again focusing on a digital-only conference in 2021. The successful sambaXP 2020 has shown that this is possible and even offers some advantages, points out Nadine Dreymann, who is planning the conference for SerNet. "Thanks to the online format, speakers worldwide who otherwise - for various reasons - would not be able to travel to Göttingen have the opportunity to present their topics." Dreymann continues, "By making participation free, we also want to give even more people the opportunity to follow the conference live and get involved." Compared to last year's event, she says, sambaXP 2021 will therefore also be even more open and incorporate interactive elements so that the samba community can better interact.

Call for Papers

The call for papers for sambaXP 2021 is in progress. Presentations can be submitted via the conference page at https://sambaxp.org. Orga team and program committee are looking forward to interesting submissions. The presentations are scheduled on the conference days (Wednesday, May 5 and Thursday, May 6) for the period from 15:00 to 21:00 German time zone (CEST). For the final agenda, the best time slots in terms of time zone will be considered in consultation with the speakers. In addition, it is possible to record the talk beforehand in individual cases. 

Tutorials

The traditional tutorial by Stefan Kania will again be designed as a webinar on the day before the conference (Tuesday, May 4, 2021). The topic: ''Setting up Samba as a print server''. Tickets are available for 50 Euros. Björn Jacke (SerNet Samba Team) will also offer a free 2-hour workshop on "Integrate SAMBA+ AIX in an existing AD domain".

William Brown is a Senior Software Engineer at SUSE, located in Australia. His talk at sambaXP 2020 focused on "The Psychology of Multifactor Authentication". 

Abstract

Multi Factor Authentication is becoming more important in our infrastructure, with organisations starting to require it for sensitive accounts and more. So why does Multi Factor Authentication ... work? How does human behaviour influence our security and interact with threats that exist online? How can design and human interaction extend to making safer systems?

Come along and learn about human interaction and design, the psychology of how humans interact with systems. We'll extend this into security to understand why human error is really the fault of poor systems design. Finally we'll talk about different threats and how MFA works to protect us from them – at a psychological level.

About the "sambaXP 2020 Retrospective"

In this series we will present recordings of the sambaXP 2020 in the coming month. The 19th edition of the international conference on the open source software Samba took place from 26 - 28 May 2020 for the first time exclusively in digital form. Due to the changed event format and the use of an online conference platform, organizer SerNet is able to offer all talks as videos for viewing (link).