samba fails to install prperly after unnistall+deleting smb.conf

[Giorgos Koklas]

Binary package hint: samba

os: ubuntu 8.04.1
package: samba 3.0.28a-1ubuntu4.4

[description]

For some reason my shares were no longer marked as shared in nautilus.
I decided to "wipe out" samba and do a fresh install. I did the following:

1. sudo apt-get remove samba
2. sudo rm -rf /etc/samba/{all files in there}
3. sudo apt-get install samba. During installation I got an error reagarding dependencies
between samba and samba-common and the installation would fail.

I managed to cmplete the installation by doing this:

sudo touch /etc/samba/smb.conf

Although samba installed my smb.conf was empty and I still haven't been able to share again.

[what I would like it to do]

I think that smb.conf should be created with its default contents each time a user installs samba AND smb.conf is missing for whatever reason. Otherwise it should use an existing smb.conf.

[!NOTICE! SOME STRINGS TRANSLATED FROM GREEK]
ProblemType: Package
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Aug 1 23:03:41 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ErrorMessage: sub-proccess post-installation script returned error state 1
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: samba-common 3.0.28a-1ubuntu4.4
PackageArchitecture: i386
SourcePackage: samba
Title: package samba-common 3.0.28a-1ubuntu4.4 failed to install/upgrade: sub-proccess post-installation script returned error state 1
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-19-generic i686

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

Did you uninstall with:

 # apt-get remove --purge samba

The "purge" option will remove the configuration files properly
(deleting the references in apt's internal database).

:-Dustin

[Giorgos Koklas (geo-kok-deactivatedaccount)]

@Dustin:

I tried the command you suggest after a few failed attempts to install and un-install samba properly but that did not do the trick either.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The smb.conf file is owned by the samba-common package, not by the samba package (which is only the server components). To force regeneration of the smb.conf file, you need to use apt-get remove --purge samba-common.

Closing as invalid, the reasons for not regenerating the config file whenever it's missing or empty are rooted in the Debian and Ubuntu policy on config files, and this can't be changed without causing more problems than it solves.

[Doomicle (doomicle)]

Hmm fixed it for me, I ran: apt-get remove --purge samba-common
(Someone in a forum said to do it and it worked! :oD)