Help desperately needed installing SAMBA

[peterv6]

I'm running Kubuntu 10.04, and I've been trying to install Samba, with no success. I've tried using apt-get install, I've tried installing it through the add/remove programs option, and neither worked. I never find a directory or file named samba in the /etc/init.d subdirectory. Can someone PLEASE help me figure out how to get this installed and running? I'd kind of like to find a step-by-step list of directions if there is one.
Thanks!
Peter V.

[Telengard]

Re: Help desperately needed installing SAMBA

I'm running Kubuntu 10.04, and I've been trying to install Samba, with no success. I've tried using apt-get install, I've tried installing it through the add/remove programs option, and neither worked. I never find a directory or file named samba in the /etc/init.d subdirectory. Can someone PLEASE help me figure out how to get this installed and running? I'd kind of like to find a step-by-step list of directions if there is one.
Thanks!
Peter V.

I'd like to see the output you get from apt-get install samba. There are some installation problems mentioned in the bug reports. (Please note that error messages and log file snippets are always welcome in your help requests.)

Also, you may want to just try these commands and see whether or not they work:

smbd -V
smbd --help

If smbd will talk to you from the command line then maybe you got closer to a successful install than you think. As to whether or not you really need the script in /etc/init.d, that is up to you to decide.

[peterv6]

Re: Help desperately needed installing SAMBA

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately my Kubuntu installation has become corrupted, and I'm redownloading it now. It may be a couple of days before I get things ready to install Samba again, but when I do, I will definitely post the installation log here for a look. One question, you said that it was up to me if I needed the /etc/init.d script. I thought it was something necessary for the installation, can you explain?
Thanks again,
Peter V.

[Telengard]

Re: Help desperately needed installing SAMBA

Sorry to hear about the bad install. Was the Kubuntu ISO file corrupted or something?

One question, you said that it was up to me if I needed the /etc/init.d script. I thought it was something necessary for the installation, can you explain?

Sure. To the best of my knowledge /etc/init.d/samba is nothing more than a script which automatically daemonizes the samba server program, smbd, after the system boots. In fact I looked at my own /etc/init.d/samba file, and that's exactly what it looks like to me.

#!/bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: samba
# Required-Start: $network $local_fs $remote_fs
# Required-Stop: $network $local_fs $remote_fs
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: start Samba daemons (nmbd and smbd)
. . .

The nmbd daemon mentioned above simply provides for NetBIOS name resolution over IP networks, so I suppose you could do without it if you don't mind using IP addresses instead of NetBIOS names.

The smbd man page seems to imply that the server may be invoked manually, daemonized or not.

. . .
OPTIONS
-D
If specified, this parameter causes the server to operate as a dae‐
mon. That is, it detaches itself and runs in the background, field‐
ing requests on the appropriate port. Operating the server as a dae‐
mon is the recommended way of running smbd for servers that provide
more than casual use file and print services. This switch is assumed
if smbd is executed on the command line of a shell.

-F
If specified, this parameter causes the main smbd process to not
daemonize, i.e. double-fork and disassociate with the terminal.
Child processes are still created as normal to service each connec‐
tion request, but the main process does not exit. This operation
mode is suitable for running smbd under process supervisors such as
supervise and svscan from Daniel J. Bernstein’s daemontools package,
or the AIX process monitor.

-S
If specified, this parameter causes smbd to log to standard output
rather than a file.

-i
If this parameter is specified it causes the server to run "interac‐
tively", not as a daemon, even if the server is executed on the com‐
mand line of a shell. Setting this parameter negates the implicit
deamon mode when run from the command line. smbd also logs to stan‐
dard output, as if the -S parameter had been given.
. . .

So it looks to me like you could simply invoke smbd manually from the command line, or even write your own /etc/init.d/samba from scratch if you really wanted to. I've never tried running the server this way, but what the heck it should work.

GNU/Linux is an extremely customizable operating system, which is why it comes in so many delicious flavors