If so I am curious how you have set them up.
Thanks,
Jeff
Hi @Shadowfire, also @davidep and @Tbaile
All my clients use AD, as all my clients are typical SME clients. Windows Shares store the majority of data.
Even all NextCloud shares base on Windows Shares.
Depending on client base (size) I will setup AD-Group Policy when more than 10-20 users are needed. Under 10, I won’t usually setup AD Group Policy.
I usually do not enforce AD Group Policy for Mac / Linux clients.
In NS7, AD and everything was easy, worked out of the box, no major issues.
In NS8, a different animal, AD works rock solid, but more of a hassle to tweak, as eg PHPLDAPadmin is missing.
The File Server of NS8, on the other hand, looks more polished than in NS7, yet actually contains MUCH less options. If migrated, setting AD permissions do not really work as expected. A sh*tload of errors.
Both for NS7 and now NS8, the file server is quick to connect, but usually ONLY with IP, using
\\SERVERNAME will mostly not work. As NS8 uses the same IP as the cluster host, the AD IP effectively change. Yet it seems that internally, pointers still exist to the old IP, as this is not corrected during migration. (This means more issues for migrated systems!).
As everyone knows, AD is based on LDAP and DNS and even contains it’s own DNS in Samba (Like in Windows).
It seems that these DNS entries are migrated verbatim, even if the file server has changed. Using the same IP or Hostname (Even old NetBIOS!) is not an option, as a migration would not be possible if both servers use the same IP (Name or IP conflict!).
Both NS7 and NS8 do not make use of WSDD, meaning the server doesn’t show up in Windows Networking in Win10 and Win11 - nor in most Linux based Desktops nor in Mac OS. All other known implementations of Samba on Linux I know have this, and it works without caveats (Synology, Qnap, OpenmediaVault, several Linux Distros/Adaptions.).
In very problemmatic cases, I have moved almost all file shares to another Storage, and refer to AD in NS8. This works solid.
I have two clients where the fila sharing is now running on the Synology NAS, two others are using OpenMediaVault (as a VM), just for file sharing.
As you can imagine, I am not very happy with this!
NS7 had issues with software versions, but everything worked.
NS8 has no issues with software versions, but the most important of small and medium Enterprises is still SMB File Sharing - and this is still still VERY flakey!
I hope this answers most of your questions!
I have added in both @davidep and @Tbaile as I do not want this post public at the moment, but I think this is extremly important for NS8 as such!
My 2 cents
Andy
Missing Samba File Sharing options:
A non-complete list of major caveats!
- Trashcan, retainment, emptying options.
- Visibility as a SMB Host.
- Correctly setting permissions for shares, 640 is a No-Go! Group shares should be 770!
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Hi everyone,
I’d prefer to keep this discussion in the public forum. Issues with AD and the File Server should already be tracked in public threads, where we should provide as many details as possible. If not, feel free to open new topics.
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Geeezzz guys, I get a wikileaks feeling. So there are secret threads and discussions?
Some of users just need a working basis, nothing else. But that includes AD and a working File Server!
My 2 cents
Andy
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I appreciate you taking the time to giving your real world examples and professional knowledge about this. Maybe it will help others as well.
It hopefully will give the dev team ideas too of where some area’s are to polish up and other areas to focus on getting completed or adjusted to give the correct or normal out come.
Thanks again
-SF-
No I personally messaged Andy with that question. He chose to send it out so everyone could benefit from the question and answer that’s all.
-SF-
I actually choose to follow @davidep suggestion. I trust our devs here! And no “secret” information was ever here…
My 2 cents
Andy
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IS Lam Available in the software center
not sufficient for what phpldapadmin offered before it in ns7?
No, it’s a nice limited toy.
AFAIK as I can see, this is purely commercial software, nothing open source. In other words, it’s a BLOB.
The Freemium version, that’s all.
Why should I even look at this?
My 2 cents
Andy
They say GPL…
For the purchased version other licenses apply
Why do you say Freemium?
Anyway, @davidep i have a strong beleif that NS8 MUST support additional AD/Ldap Paramters on the UI, honestly, this is after what i have seen so far playing around with multiple IDP-SSO solutions in NS8 environment, kindly consider this with significant priority actually.
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This answers your question.
When you purchase the Pro version, you get much more functionality, but it’s no more open source anymore. I can’t just add in a library or code, that means Pay for Premium = Freemium…
Not only do other licenses apply, it’s a time bombed binary or whatever.
My 2 cents
Andy
Don’t we all, on any subject at any given time. Users come and go.
I confirm this experience.
After the migration, I had to re-set ACL to SMB shares to apply group policies.
Ps.: And the most annoying intervention is that the shares have to be manually unmounted and remounted on the clients. In small environments this may only be a nuisance, but with many clients it is an impossibility.
Both for NS7 and now NS8, the file server is quick to connect, but usually ONLY with IP, using
\SERVERNAME will mostly not work.
It was the same for me.
and this is still still VERY flakey!
SMB-Shares are essential and important.
Another bad experience:
One day the credentials are accepted during the mount process, another day they are not.
I think the developers have to check this themselves and not outsource such tests to the community when they migrate productive servers.
After all, we supposedly have a release and not a beta version.
This is not cheap bashing, but a legitimate expectation.
3 Likes
We, too, had some doubts regarding the NS7->NS8 migration for our fileservers since the preliminary tests popped up the same big issues (Network trash, shares ACLs, …) but with these new problems it looks like we’ll definitely stick to NS7.
And this brings an “automatic” question: do you know any good alternative to NS8? We previously used SME server, but at the time other than this (NethServer) couldn’t find anything useful.
Cheers!
Luca
Hi and welcome!
I believe you just answered your own question. Some careful planning and some test runs will go a long way!
HTH
If you just look for a fileserver, there are options. If however you want something that provides a package similar to NS8, I think your choices are very limited.
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Yes, usually file server but also some mail server. Can you give me some (Distribution?) names?
That’s exactly the point: we don’t. What we need is a plain and simple mail- or file-server, something that NS7 was almost perfect for.
Cheers!
Luca