Samba, "unrecognized service"

[dibl]

"sudo service samba start" generates an error "unrecognized service".

"sudo /etc/init.d/samba start" generates an error "samba: command not found".

As user, "samba" generates a suggestion that I install something called samba4.

Installing samba4 generates a whole 'nother world of errors.

What the H is going on with samba?

[vw72]

Your first error messages mean that samba wasn't installed. Now that you have installed it, what are the problems?

[dibl]

Let me try again.

don@virtual-precise:~$ sudo apt-cache policy samba
samba:
  Installed: 2:3.6.3-2ubuntu1
  Candidate: 2:3.6.3-2ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 2:3.6.3-2ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
don@virtual-precise:~$ sudo service samba start
samba: unrecognized service
don@virtual-precise:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/samba start
sudo: /etc/init.d/samba: command not found

My most powerful troubleshooting tool, Google, found that, in addition to the samba package, I need samba-common and system-config-samba. Hmmm, I would have thought the samba package would have such needed support packages as dependencies, but oh well:

don@virtual-precise:~$ sudo apt-get install samba-common system-config-samba
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
samba-common is already the newest version.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libglade2-0 libuser1 python-central python-glade2 python-libuser
  python-support
Suggested packages:
  python-gtk2-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libglade2-0 libuser1 python-central python-glade2 python-libuser
  python-support system-config-samba

Now does it work?

don@virtual-precise:~$ sudo service samba start
samba: unrecognized service

Sigh. Next step suggests that I run Alt-F2 "kdesudo system-config-samba", and doing this did bring up an error regarding the configuration file /etc/samba/smb.conf, which is legitimate as I had not yet made my configuration settings. But if the samba service won't run, it doesn't matter much about what the configuration file says!

[dibl]

OK, progress. Good guidance for samba on *buntu is here.

I'm not sure when this changed (it is not changed on Debian), but samba on *buntu is not a running service any more, it is only a daemon named smbd. EDIT: You also need the daemon nmbd -- see next post in thread!

don@virtual-precise:~$ ls /etc/rc5.d
README         S01pppd-dns    S01saned         S02gpsd         S03rc.local
S01dns-clean   S01pulseaudio  S01vmware-tools  S03grub-common  S75sudo
S01kerneloops  S01rsync       S02acpi-support  S03ondemand

but

don@virtual-precise:~$ ps aux | grep smbd
don       3330  0.0  0.0   9376   928 pts/1    S+   09:49   0:00 grep --color=auto smbd

"sudo testparm" spits 2 errors:

ERROR: state directory /var/lib/samba does not exist
ERROR: cache directory /var/cache/samba does not exist

then parses my /etc/samba/smb.conf file correctly. Googling the errors leads to a couple of launchpad bug reports:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ba/+bug/695256
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ry/048499.html

And finally, using Alt-F2 "kdesudo systemsettings" I went into Systemsettings > Network and Connectivity > Sharing, and immediately observed this:



sooooo .... more work and maybe more fixing is going to be needed here. There are no "old third party modules", so it's either a 12.04 bug with the kcm_kio thing, or something amiss with my fully-updated kubuntu-desktop suite.

[dibl]

I wish I could state precisely which of my fiddling about fixed this issue, but I'll try to recap what I did. I did win the fight:



I discovered that the second needed daemon, nmbd, was not in fact running, and refused to start. So, even though I just updated my 12.04 system this morning, I went ahead and ran

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install --reinstall kubuntu-desktop

Lo and behold a handful of packages were installed -- I should have captured their names but at that moment I had no faith that it was related to samba. There was nothing resembling a "kcm_kio" library, for example.

Next, I reinstalled samba:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall samba

and it installed with no error. At the end of that process, I saw both smbd and nmbd start up corrrectly -- I realized I had NOT seen that before.

I reset my user's home folder for sharing, using Alt-F2 "kdesudo dolphin" and changing the properties to make it shared.

I Alt-F2 "kdesudo systemsettings" opened systemsettings in super user mode, and I was able to open Network and Connectivity > Sharing and it opened correctly, without the error message above. I set my user name and my network password there.

I shut down and restarted the system, and then after waiting 5 minutes I took a look from a Windows 7 system and was pleased to see the Precise server available, and my shared directory was there and opened correctly when given the correct user name and password.

Yay.