Samba – How to recreate samba secrets.tdb file

SOLVED!!!!!!!!!!!

I have a script that was starting Samba (NMBD, SMBD) as well as OpenLDAP (SLAPD). It's an RC script that reads configuration data from a file to determine, among other things, which processes are already running or if a dependent process fails to start, etc... Here is a snippet of the relevant part in the script. The last line copies a version of the nsswitch.conf into place that specifies to use LDAP lookups.

while [ $i -lt $MAXPROCS ];
  do
   PID=${PROC[$i]}
   StartProc $PID

   if test $? != 0; then
    echo "!!! Aborting Any Remaining Start-up Processes !!!"
    exit 1
   fi

  i=$(($i+1))
done

 cp /etc/rc.d/pozix/nsswitch.conf.ldap /etc/nsswitch.conf

And upon shutdown I was doing the following; notice I copy a nsswitch.conf file that has "noldap" entries in it.

while [ $i -lt $MAXPROCS ];
do
  PID=${PROC[$i]}
  StopProc $PID
  i=$(($i+1))
done

cp /etc/rc.d/pozix/nsswitch.conf.noldap /etc/nsswitch.conf

It turns out that in the start-up scenario, samba wants the nsswtich.conf content to have the ldap entries there prior to invocation. Here is what I did to fix my issues:

cp /etc/rc.d/pozix/nsswitch.conf.ldap /etc/nsswitch.conf

while [ $i -lt $MAXPROCS ];
  do
   PID=${PROC[$i]}
   StartProc $PID

   if test $? != 0; then
    cp /etc/rc.d/pozix/nsswitch.conf.noldap /etc/nsswitch.conf
    echo "!!! Aborting Any Remaining Start-up Processes !!!"
    exit 1
   fi

  i=$(($i+1))
done

In summary, it appears that how you start SMBD is just as important as when you start it. If you start SMBD when nsswitch.conf has no LDAP entries, you get a version of smbd running linked to nss_ldap.so thinking it should only rely upon /etc/passwd (if that is all that is in the nsswitch.conf file) and changing the nsswitch.conf contents after SMBD is running has no effect.

Hope this helps other system builders....

You cannot force all programs to use the file locking mechanism provided by samba. A lot of 'simple' applications just open the file, make a local copy (either in memory or on local disk) and then close the original file, so the lock only lasts as long as the opening and copying action. Notepad is one example of this. Moreover, this is actually a feature of most progams, not a shortcoming.

Think about what happens when an applications crashes with the lock still in place. Programs using filesystem locks should be aware of it and its implications and have a recover and release mechanism. That's why 'simple' applications avoid filesystem locking.

If you really want to use some kind of 'in use' messages for all applications you should use a versioning system. As mentioned elsewhere on serverfault, this isn't necessarily a technical problem, more a social one: you'll have a hard time convincing non-technical people to actually use it.