Frequently Asked Questions

What is Samba?

Samba is a suite of programs that enables interoperability between Linux/Unix servers and Windows clients. See What Is Samba? for more.

What is the Samba Team?

If someone is on the Samba Team, this means they have commit rights to the Samba GIT repository. Samba Team members, then, are the ones who maintain Samba, develop new features, and apply patches from the larger Samba community, to name just a few areas of responsibility.

How do I contact a Samba Team member?

See the Samba Team page for a list of Team member emails and websites. Most can be reached through the samba-technical mailing list or on IRC.

How can I get help with Samba?

The Samba mailing list would be your best bet. If you are seeking someone who provides commercial support services for Samba, please see the support providers lists.

How can I keep up to date with Samba development?

For general information, such as release announcements, see http://news.samba.org/. For more in-depth info on the daily work of Samba development, it's best to subscribe to the samba-technical mailing list, or visit #samba-technical on irc.freenode.net. The obsessive-compulsive will follow both.

How can I get involved with Samba development?

The usual course is to become active on the mailing lists and/or IRC first. Then, when you spot a bug or think of some cool feature you'd like to see Samba implement, work up a patch and submit it to the samba-technical mailing list.

The really thorough contributor will also find the corresponding bug in Bugzilla and attach the patch there. Be sure to mention you've done this when posting to the samba-technical mailing list.

Will you include my patch in the next release?

If the patch is a bug fix, and it can be incorporated without an adverse affect on other functionality, then yes, it will likely be included.

If the patch implements a new feature, then larger questions about usefulness and maintainability also have to be addressed. Generally, though, we try to include as much good work as we can.

Which Samba version should I run?

The Samba 2.2 branch is no longer maintained. It's EOL was October 1, 2004.

The Samba 3.0 branch is not supported any longer.

The Samba 3.2 branch is not supported any longer.

The Samba 3.3 branch is in the security fixes only mode.

The Samba 3.4 branch is in the bug fix mode. That means, there are bug fix releases on a as needed basis.

The current stable, production Samba server is the Samba 3.5 branch. The most recent release is always the recommended version for production use. See the release history page for an overview of current and past releases or the Release Planning Wiki page for more information on current and upcoming releases and schedules.

Samba4 is a development branch that hasn't yet had an initial release. If you are a developer wanting to play with the bleeding-edge of the work done on Samba, try Samba4, which you'll obviously have to build yourself.

How do I verify a tarball with the GnuPG signature?

Using GnuPG, simply download the Samba source distribution, the tarball signature, and the Samba distribution public key. Then run:

$ gpg --import samba-pubkey.asc
$ gunzip samba-version.tar.gz
$ gpg --verify samba-release.tar.asc

Please notice, the signature is checked against the uncompressed tarball.

What should I do if I think I've found a security issue?

Please send mail to security@samba.org. Provide any relevant information you can, so that we can recreate your test and confirm your results.

What should I do if I think I've found a bug?

Please file a bug report at https://bugzilla.samba.org/. You could also send mail to the samba-technical mailing list providing any relevant info while mentioning you've filed a bug report.