[Samba] replication issue..?

[Rowland Penny]

On Thu, 10 Sep 2026 09:31:09 +0200
Joachim Lindenberg via samba <samba at lists.samba.org> wrote:

> Rowland wrote:
> > It isn't a good idea for a DC to be offline for long, the time can
> > be different when they come back online and then replication will
> > not occur. Why do they go offline ? are they being turned off ? ...
> > It can often be quicker and easier to demote a faulty DC and
> > replace it with a new one, but unless you stop the other DCs going
> > offline, it may happen again.
> 
> One of them is sleeping frequently in order to save energy and noise,

I cannot recommend doing that, a DC should always be on, except for
reboots or upgrades (which can lead to reboots), you can get lingering
objects on the 'off' DC if something is deleted on an 'on' DC.
 
> the other was at a location that I had to give up and am still
> looking for a new one.

Then demote it, forcibly if you must.

> All systems have their time updated while
> coming online again. But what does "long" mean and don´t you consider
> this a replication bug?

'long' can be any extended period, but anything past the tombstone
lifetime is probably fatal. I would not consider this a bug, just bad
maintenance.

> At least I am not aware this is a documented
> feature.
> 
> And definitely I´d appreciate if you could answer my questions w.r.t.
> recovery.

I am not sure that you can recover this and if you can, it will not be
trivial, you appear to have carried out the easiest things. As I said,
in cases like this, it is probably easier to demote the faulty DC and
create a new one.

Rowland