[Samba] Upgrade from 4.6.7 to 4.17.4 fails with database problem (Failure during re-pack, so transaction must be aborted)

[Rowland Penny]

On 18/05/2023 09:41, Ricardo Esteves via samba wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Thank you for help, probably updating using another host and use join, 
> or demoting one of my DCs (i have 2, DC1, and DC2) upgrade and then join 
> the demoted one, and then do the same for the other is the best way.
> 
> But actually last night i was able to do the inplace upgrade 
> successfully , basically the problem was on DC1 (probably had some bad 
> old entries on the db), what i did was transfer all the fsmo roles to 
> DC2, demote DC1, and then i did the inplace upgrade of DC2 and went ok. 
> Now i need to upgrade and join DC1 back.
> 
> Btw, in order to avoid the issue you mentioned (I would never recommend 
> upgrading a self compiled version of Samba in this way. There have been 
> instances of files being removed from the version of Samba that you are 
> upgrading to, that still exist on disk) what i usually do is remove
> /usr/local/samba/bin|sbin|share|lib|lib64|libexec
> i leave only  /usr/local/samba/etc|private|var
> and then i do the ./configure / make / make install

AD is so easy to upgrade between major versions by adding new DC's, that 
I would never upgrade in place. Minor upgrades i.e. 4.x.5 to 4.x.6 are 
probably okay, but I would never go from i.e. 4.15.x to 4.16.x by 
upgrading in place, it is, in my opinion, just not worth the risk.

Also building Samba yourself isn't really required any more, unless you 
need to test something. There are numerous repos that can supply Samba 
packages now and this is further helped by the devs deciding that 
perhaps MIT isn't experimental any more.

Rowland