[Samba] How to determine Samba Installation directory

[Peter Milesson]

On 06.05.2025 18:50, Mark Foley via samba wrote:
> On Thu May  1 01:48:05 2025 Rowland Penny via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, 30 Apr 2025 21:38:40 -0400
>> Mark Foley via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 30 Apr 2025 21:19:57 Rowland Penny <rpenny at samba.org> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:40:06 -0400
>>>> Mark Foley via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I'm building Samba from a scratch download from samba.org.
> [snip]
>
>>> Will I have to provision from scratch? I can do so if needed, no
>>> problem.
>> Not if you 'join' a new DC to your domain.
>>
>>> I may have to rejoin domain members? I'll take them offline before
>>> doing this.
>> Again, if you are joining a new DC, then this shouldn't affect your
>> Windows clients.
> My plan is to first restore an image of the existing DC to a new machine, then
> upgrade to the latest Samba 4.22.1 and see if that works with the current
> config, sam.ldb, etc.
>
> If not, I'll wipe and reprovision from scratch with the new 4.22.1, recreate the
> policies, and join a test Windows 11 member.  If that doesn't fix the password
> and redirected folder problems then it has to be a bug in Samba and I'll try
> reporting again.  I'll also do a control test by creating a DC with a Windows
> machine and verify password and redirection work using that platform.
>
> Peter Smode reminded me how to figure out where the various Samba related
> directory are with:
>
> smbd -b | egrep "LOCKDIR|STATEDIR|CACHEDIR|PRIVATE_DIR"
>
> So, when I install 4.22.1 I'll do:
>
> ./configure --with-system-mitkrb5 --prefix /var/lib/samba/ --sbindir=/usr/sbin/ --sysconfdir=/etc/samba/
>
>> Are you sure I cannot get you to jump ship to Debian ? While
>> problems can still occur on Debian, there are a lot more users of Samba
>> on Debian, so you are more likely to get help.
>>
>> Rowland
> Ironically, I did start out trying Debian back in 2012 and before that Zentyal
> and OpenChange, the latter two being under constant development and moving
> targets with respect to getting all the pieces/parts to work together.
>
> Debian, at the time, required a lot of additional packages to be downloaded.
> Samba as a DC was not supported by the standard install. It was work getting
> all the reqired packages installed. I also had to remove so-called "helper"
> programs to get the DC server to work. It did sort-of work, but according to my
> notes Remote Desktop to the Windows 7 computers didn't work, nor would updates
> to the domain workstations work. Possibly Policies in general were a problem.
>
> For the heck of it, I tried Slackware 14.1 which I had implemented elsewhere as
> a web server. Slackware had a quite up-to-date Samba release at the time and it
> worked as a DC right out of the box. I just had to figure out the normal issues
> like what "provision" meant. And, since the target platform was already a
> normal DNS server, I used the BIND9_FLATFILE backend which was some work, but
> my choice, not a Slackware issue.
>
> At this point, I don't think I want to go through the learning curve of
> implementing a DC (or even a Linux host!) in Debian. And, as the other office
> Linux servers are all Slackware, I'd rather not mix distros right now. Some
> day, going to Debian across the board might become a necessity.
>
> I think for the most part my long-running plethora of question on this list have
> not been Slackware specific issues and more Samba newbie issues.
>
> After releasing a stable version, Slackware does tend to fall behind in keeping
> up to date on the latest Slackware and other apps. They start using and testing
> newer versions in their under-development "Slackware Current" version which
> eventually becomes the next stable release. I tend to stick which the official
> stable release unless there are compelling reasons to do otherwise -- which I
> hope is the case with this present issue.
>
> Thanks for all your help --Mark
>
Hi Mark,

I was a die hard Slackware buff for many years. I installed and managed 
several Samba NT4 domains through almost 20 years, but i realized that 
it was a dead end with the introduction of Windows 10. I migrated a 
couple of the NT4 domains to AD using CentOS 7. Still being a true 
Slackware guy, I compiled Samba myself, as CentOS did not have AD DC 
support. CentOS 7 was really stable, and when CentOS/Redhat spun off in 
a completely incomprehensible direction, I looked for something else, 
equally stable. At that time, Slackware seemed to be dead, so I tried 
quite a few other distributions. I found that Debian fulfilled my 
stability requirements. It's not bleeding edge like Arch Linux (with 
frequent update glitches), basically it's conservative, packages are 
thoroughly tested, and nasty surprises are almost non existent. With 
Debian you can keep the OS at a conservative level, and just choose some 
packages to be fairly current. In my case  mainly Samba.

I admit that the transition from System-V to System-D frequently felt 
like striking a cat against the grain. It took time getting used to 
systemd, and the feeling of a completely bloated /etc. Looking back, I'm 
very happy to have made the transition to Debian. It has saved med 
incredible amounts of time and worries. You just need to accept that 
there is some bloat, but the end result is what matters (happy users).

Just my five cents.

Best regards,

Peter

P.S. I may have a look at the latest Slackware, just for the fun of it. D.S.