Good day!

I was experimenting connecting my Ubuntu 6.10 PC to my WinXP PC, and somehow removed Samba in the process. When I tried to install it again, I get this error.

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Recommended packages:
smbldap-tools
The following NEW packages will be installed:
samba
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/3028kB of archives.
After unpacking 7569kB of additional disk space will be used.
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package samba.
(Reading database ... files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking samba (from .../samba_3.0.22-1ubuntu4.1_i386.deb) ...
Setting up samba (3.0.22-1ubuntu4.1) ...
Generating /etc/default/samba...
* Starting Samba daemons... [fail]
invoke-rc.d: initscript samba, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing samba (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
samba
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I googled and saw a potential answer to my problem in https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ticket/3583. The relevant paragraph in the link says: "The "prerm" script for samba is located at /var/lib/dpkg/info/samba.prerm.For some reason, the package is failed to correctly stop the samba service. To try to solve this, I would do the following:

sudo dpkg -P samba samba-common smbclient
sudo rm -f /etc/rc*.d/*samba /etc/init.d/samba

Then see if re-installing samba will work correctly:"


However, the solution did not work for me. I still get the same error.

Somebody, pls. help!

TIA,

Jules

Try manually stopping the Samba services first, then running the commands that you quoted. Remember that you may have a nmbd service as well as the main smbd service. Please do update that bug if you get further - it may help someone else in the same position .

Hi hob!

I manually stop Samba by running sudo /etc/init.d/samba stop, then performed the operations again. When I tried reinstalling Samba, I got the same error.

What is nmdb? I don't seem to have that on my machine. Do i have to stop that service, too? Or is that an alternative to Samba? Pls. forgive the ignorance

Thanks.

Jules

nmbd is an optional service provided by Samba - it enables the "WINS" features.

I suspect that the uninstall routine is leaving something behind, which is fixable with a bit of courage . Try running the "dpkg -P" command, and then manually deleting the "samba" directories left behind - you will find one in /etc (for configuration files), and some in subdirectories of /var/.

Edit: To get a complete list of the files and directories that a package provides, use "dpkg -c". You will find copies of all downloaded packages in /var/cache/apt/archives/, so:

dpkg -c /var/cache/apt/archives/samba-common_3.0.22-1ubuntu4.1_i386.deb | less

Will list all of the file and directories provided by samba-common_3.0.22-1ubuntu4.1_i386.deb, one page at a time.

Hi!

Still no go . I did as you suggested, purge samba, remove all files and directories created during the install process, tried reinstalling but still got the same error during installation.

I don't know if the problem has got to do with the package available in the Ubuntu repositories. I'll try to download the samba sources from Samba.org, compile it and see if it will install.

Thanks and regards.