Failed to set gid privileges

[Eloy A. Paris]

Hi Justin,

> I run Debian Linux, and I had Samba running.  I just upgraded to
> version 2.2 of Debian, which included an upgrade to version 2.0.7-3.
> Now I'm getting the following messages anytime a connection is attempted,
> and then I get a message that "This device does not exist on the network"
>
> [2000/08/28 00:08:56, 1] smbd/server.c:main(641)
>   smbd version 2.0.7 started.
>   Copyright Andrew Tridgell 1992-1998
> [2000/08/28 00:08:56, 1] smbd/files.c:file_init(216)
>   file_init: Information only: requested 10000 open files, 246 are
> available.
> [2000/08/28 00:08:56, 0] lib/util_sec.c:assert_gid(72)
>   Failed to set gid privileges to (-1,1002) now set to (0,0) uid=(0,0)
> [2000/08/28 00:08:56, 0] lib/util.c:smb_panic(2381)
>   PANIC: failed to set gid

I am the maintainer of the Samba package for Debian and know very well what
your problem is: you are running a 2.0.x linux kernel. If you upgrade to a
2.2.x Linux kernel the problem will go away. This problem has been reported
several times, and I still haven't been able to figure out a nice solution.

What happens is that I build the Debian packages on a system running 2.2.x
(or even 2.4.x) kernels, and the configure script then selects some system
calls (namely sedresid() and setresgid() ) which are available in the 2.2.x
kernels but not in the 2.0.x kernels. So, when you run these binaries in a
system that is running a 2.0.x kernel, the program (smbd) tries to make
these system calls but since they are not available they fail and smbd spits
those error messages you are seeing.

An alternative solution if you want to stick to the 2.0.x kernel is to grab
the sources and recompile the package. This way you will be able to use the
Debian Samba packages under your 2.0.x kernel.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Eloy.-