> 1. What is your output of testparm?No errors or warnings, apart from rlimit_max: increasing rlimit_max (1024) to minimum Windows limit (16384)> 2. If you run top, are any Samba related processes (winbindd, smbd, etc) consuming excessively high amounts of CPU?I did not observe this, although the machine was running at a load of 1+ with no apparent culprit.> 3. Have you considered cranking up or enabling logging to obtain some useful log info?Considered, yes, executed, no ;-)> 4. Has this Samba server run correctly in the past? If so, has anything changed recently?Yes, it always has, and works perfectly with -33. Timestamp on smb.conf shows it was last modified under 3.6.23-24, followed by updates to -25, -30, -35. With trial and error, I settled on -33 as last working version.> 5. You probably already know this but Samba 3.6.x is ancient. Have you considered running Samba 4.x? Centos 6 repos have Samba 4.2.10 packages.Samba 4.x is an intimidating piece of software. If it can perfrom the same function and use the same config, I'm willing to try it.> 6. Have you checked for corrupted Samba *.tbd files? Consider running tdbbackup: > https://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages-3/tdbbackup.8.htmlSee 4. .tdb files look ok and tdbbackup gives no errors.
> Samba 4.x is an intimidating piece of software. If it can perfrom the same function and use the same config, I'm willing to try it.Without log messages or process table info, it's hard to advise any further. Generally speaking, Samba4 can do everything that Samba 3.6 does. If your server is a domain member or standalone, it should be relatively straightforward. I migrated my Samba 3.6 servers to Samba4 when the badlock vulnerability was announced. My servers are AD domain members, so the migration was fairly simple. Without knowing which role (domain controller, domain member, standalone) your Samba server is providing, it's difficult to comment on the complexity of migrating your server to Samba4. Consider spinning up a VM that is similar to your current server, including the same Samba 3.6 packages and your current smb.conf. See if you can replicate the problem your users are experiencing. Try upgrading the VM to Samba4 to see if the enabled features in your smb.conf file work with Samba4. Running testparm should tell you if it works (or not). When I performed my upgrade, I first had to discover which Samba 3.6.x packages were installed, then I had to remove those packages before installing the Samba4 packages. Backup your current smb.conf file prior to removing your Samba 3.6 packages. Check here for info on updating Samba: https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Updating_Samba Andrew
I have another samba server and upgraded it to samba4. testparm returns clean with the old config (ROLE_DOMAIN_PDC) and starts up fine. smbclient seems to work fine. The next thing now is to try and make it a domain member so it can auth against AD. Thanks, Andrew, I appreciate the pointers.