[Samba] Unable to demote DC

[Chris Hastie]

On 23/03/2016 11:31, Denis Cardon wrote:
> which version of samba are you using? 4.4 or below?

Hi, thanks for your suggestions.

I have version 4.1.6 on two DC should remain (from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 
packages). The one I'm trying to demote is actually 4.3.4 from the 
Zentyal repositories.
> is the sogo3.ad.oak-wood.co.uk server still running ok or do you have
> replication problem on that server?
I have three DCs, oak, sogo3 and zent1. As far as I can tell replication 
between sogo3 and oak is fine, although occassionally flaky (sometimes I 
have to restart them to get them synced). Replication between zent1 and 
the others has never really worked, which is one of the reasons I want 
to demote it. I've also tried doing the demote on zent1 with 
--server=oak.ad.oak-wood.co.uk to force the choice of server to partner 
with, but with the same effect.

> Server demotion has been a common issue for quite some time. Could you
> try to upgrade to 4.4 and run the samba-tool demote with the
> --remove-other-dead-server flag?
>
> Otherwise you can demote by hand cleaning up the LDAP and DNS on the DC
> that is still running properly.

Of the two options which would you recommend? I'm retiscent to compile 
4.4 from source as I try to keep everything on Ubuntu LTS and standard 
repositories. On the other hand, hand cleaning sounds like it could be 
fraught with problems and gotchas

Thanks

Chris