[Samba] WERR_DS_DRA_MISSING_PARENT error when joining new DC

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Wed, 2018-02-14 at 09:55 -0600, DreamySurfer212 via samba wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Feb 14, 2018, at 06:01, Denis Cardon wrote:
> > Hi DreamySurfer212,
> > > 
> > > When trying to join a new DC to an existing Samba4 domain, I am
> > > getting this WERR_DS_DRA_MISSING_PARENT error. Does any have any
> > > suggestions on how to fix it? My original 6 dc's are running the last
> > > free Sernet (4.2.14)  on CentOS6 and the error occurs if I use Sernet
> > > 4.2.14 or 4.7.5-Debian. I finally have time to upgrade and something
> > > is broke.
> > 
> > Samba 4.2.14 is EOL for quite some time... If you cannot afford the good 
> > work done by SerNet, then you need to use other packages.
> > 
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to respond. Yes, I am quite aware. I inherited this mess and am trying to get it upgraded to the latest 4.7.x on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

It is likely that 4.7 can't join 4.2 for some use cases, depending on
the order the domain was modified in.  You may need to combine in-place 
upgrades with domain joins to get Samba first up to 4.6 on the sending
DC and join Samba 4.7 to that.  

Of course take careful backups and probably do it on a clone of the
server isolated if you can. 

Be sure to do your final upgrade to 4.7 by joining a new DC, rather
than in-place upgrade for a number of reasons, in particular the
serious issue we fixed in Samba 4.7.5.

I hope this helps,

Andrew Bartlett
-- 
Andrew Bartlett                       http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba