Samba smbpasswd file missing
 

Hey all,

For backing up a server I wanted to set up my Samba. Having done this before I started with changing my smb.conf
After doing so I didn't look any further and stated this command right away:

smbpasswd -a user

This gave me a bunch of errors (which unfortunately I'm not able to reproduce), but at the end it stated my user was added. Of course I didn't thick so and wanted to checkout my smbpasswd file. I was very surprised to find out there was no smbpasswd file there! (/etc/samba/smbpasswd)

So I search google. There was someone saying you can just make your own with the following command:

touch smbpasswd

I have absolutely no idea what that does, but it tried it anyway. It did create smbpasswd. I tried to add my user again. It came up like this:

[root@dowiki01 samba]# smbpasswd -a twadmin
New SMB password:
Retype new SMB password:

Which looks like there is something already there. Looking in my newly created file it was empty.

Now I ended up having two questions:

1.) What did I actually create using touch?
2.) How can solve my smbpasswd issue?

(I using CentOS 5.3 btw)

Thanks in advance.

Check your smb.conf file for what your password backend is. (passdb backend =). If it isn't listed, the smbpasswd file is the default.

The touch command will update the timestamp on an existing file, and create a new file if it doesn't exist. You might try restarting samba.
Also make sure that the user you are trying to add exists in /etc/passwd. Otherwise smbpasswd will fail and not add the new user.

Thanks for replying.

In my conf:
passdb backend = tdbsam

I checked my user in /etc/passwd and it does existed. Then I restarted my smb. Didn't work though.

in this case, the smbpasswd file should be


because of that format, you cannot just create it using touch and expect it to work.

taken from

In a strict sense, there are three supported account storage and access systems. One of these is considered
obsolete (smbpasswd). It is recommended to use the <code class="literal">tdbsam</code> method for all simple systems. Use
<code class="literal">ldapsam</code> for larger and more complex networks.


check content of this passdb file

tdbsam is a different password backend than the smbpasswd file.
Run "sudo /usr/bin/pdbedit -L" and see if the user is in it. If you didn't add the user as a Linux user first, you may need to rerun smbpasswd again.

You can use either smbpasswd or pdbedit program to manage the tdbsam account database.

Try

tdbdump

if you have /etc/samba/passdb.tdb

I know that this thread has not been replied for a long time, but as it helped me, I decided to leave here what I found.

Then look for "passdb backend (G)"

In my case (Ubuntu 10.04), with tdbsam, the file is at /var/lib/samba/passdb.tdb

With smbpasswd, you have the /etc/samba/smbpasswd, that is created when you add users with the "smbpasswd -a <user>" command.