SSSD fails to create /var/lib/sss/gpo_cache/$domain

[Tom Seewald]

What I expected: After joining a domain successfully I would be able to logon with a domain user account.

What happened: I cannot logon with domain accounts, if I su $domain_user I get a system error from su.

Steps taken to encounter the issue:

Performed a clean install of 16.04. Updated all packages (sssd 1.13.4-1ubuntu1) and rebooted. After that, I joined the domain using realm -v join -U $username redacted.domain. This was successful, and realm list came back as normal.

However whenever I attempted to logon using my domain credentials, Ubuntu would hang and then go back to a blank logon prompt - no errors about incorrect username/password.

After setting debug_level = 4 in /etc/sssd/sssd.conf I saw that /var/log/sssd/gpo_child.log began filling with errors whenever I attempted to log in or su to a domain user.

The errors were generally like this:

[[sssd[gpo_child[1356]]]] [prepare_gpo_cache] (0x0020): mkdir(/var/lib/sss/gpo_cache/redacted.domain) failed: 2
[[sssd[gpo_child[1356]]]] [gpo_cache_store_file] (0x0020): prepare_gpo_cache failed [2][No such file or directory]
[[sssd[gpo_child[1356]]]] [gpo_cache_store_file] (0x0020): Error encountered: 2.
[[sssd[gpo_child[1356]]]] [copy_smb_file_to_gpo_cache] (0x0020): gpo_cache_store_file failed [2][No such file or directory]
[[sssd[gpo_child[1356]]]] [perform_smb_operations] (0x0020): copy_smb_file_to_gpo_cache failed [2][No such file or directory]
[[sssd[gpo_child[1356]]]] [main] (0x0020): perform_smb_operations failed.[2][No such file or directory].
[[sssd[gpo_child[1356]]]] [main] (0x0020): gpo_child failed!

After searching online I found a solution: https://askubuntu.com/questions/764262/pam-sss-system-error-how-to-find-the-problem

Which boils down to this:

mkdir -p /var/lib/sss/gpo_cache/example.com
chown -R sssd:sssd /var/lib/sss/gpo_cache

While this does have a workaround this is quite a pain for anyone hoping for a straight forward process of joining a domain.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: sssd 1.13.4-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-22.40-generic 4.4.8
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-22-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue May 31 14:13:23 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-05-03 (27 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160420.3)
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 TERM=linux
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
SourcePackage: sssd
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.