samba - Jul 2024 - samba-ad-dc from debian backports fails to start with /usr/sbin/samba missing

04.07.2024 21:27, Paul Leiber via samba wrote:
> Dear Samba list,
> 
> I have a Samba instance running as an ad-dc on debian bullseye. Some time
ago, I changed the standard installation to backports with
> 
> apt -t bullseye-backports install samba
> 
> After a recent update, samba-ad-dc service didn't start anymore. The
journal gave the following hint:
> 
> Jul 04 20:05:37 xxx (samba)[5864]: samba-ad-dc.service: Failed at step EXEC
spawning /usr/sbin/samba: No such file or directory
Paul, others who also hit this issue.  I'm curious, I really am, - why
aren't you seeing the
NEWS entries I've written.

Debian packages has NEWS mechanism - important information which is supposed to
be presented
to the user on package upgrades.  apt-listchanges package is responsible for
this -- it is
a part of standard install, with Priority: standard, so it is initially present
on any
debian system installed the regular way.  By default, NEWS entries, if any, are
displayed
while upgrading a package, apt waits the user to acknowledge the reading.

What prevents you and others from seeing these entries?

I had another way to do this transition (moving some files from main samba
package to
samba-ad-dc package).  For example, it's possible to make samba Recommends:
samba-ad-dc,
so samba-ad-dc package will be installed most of the time (unless the user
disabled
installing recommended packages, which is not recommended).  But I don't
want to do
that, because samba-ad-dc has additional dependencies not needed by samba.  So I
went
this way, adding the fine docs to samba.NEWS file
(/usr/share/doc/samba/NEWS.gz), in
a hope the user will read this info.  Apparently they aren't aware of that.

(When upgrading from bookworm to trixie, there will be release notes document,
where
we'll mention this change in samba, - so this one will have a bit more
chances to be
seen, at least).

Thanks,

/mjt

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Hello mjt,

I can only speak for myself:

For bigger upgrades (e. g. samba 4.19 -> 4.20) Im manually updating a 
few servers and check if everything works.

For smaller updates (e. g. 4.20.1 -> 4.20.2) Im using saltstack to 
automate updating the servers. It suppresses these messages and this is 
fine in 99% of all cases because a minor update is not supposed to 
change much (e. g. split a package).

Funnily enough our DCs kept running after updating to 4.20.2 WITHOUT the 
samba-ad-dc package. Dont know why it worked for us and not for 
everybody else.

Regards, Matthias.

Am 05.07.24 um 07:55 schrieb Michael Tokarev via samba:
> 04.07.2024 21:27, Paul Leiber via samba wrote:
>> Dear Samba list,
>>
>> I have a Samba instance running as an ad-dc on debian bullseye. Some 
>> time ago, I changed the standard installation to backports with
>>
>> apt -t bullseye-backports install samba
>>
>> After a recent update, samba-ad-dc service didn't start anymore.
The
>> journal gave the following hint:
>>
>> Jul 04 20:05:37 xxx (samba)[5864]: samba-ad-dc.service: Failed at 
>> step EXEC spawning /usr/sbin/samba: No such file or directory
>
> Paul, others who also hit this issue.? I'm curious, I really am, - why 
> aren't you seeing the
> NEWS entries I've written.
>
> Debian packages has NEWS mechanism - important information which is 
> supposed to be presented
> to the user on package upgrades.? apt-listchanges package is 
> responsible for this -- it is
> a part of standard install, with Priority: standard, so it is 
> initially present on any
> debian system installed the regular way.? By default, NEWS entries, if 
> any, are displayed
> while upgrading a package, apt waits the user to acknowledge the reading.
>
> What prevents you and others from seeing these entries?
>
> I had another way to do this transition (moving some files from main 
> samba package to
> samba-ad-dc package).? For example, it's possible to make samba 
> Recommends: samba-ad-dc,
> so samba-ad-dc package will be installed most of the time (unless the 
> user disabled
> installing recommended packages, which is not recommended).? But I 
> don't want to do
> that, because samba-ad-dc has additional dependencies not needed by 
> samba.? So I went
> this way, adding the fine docs to samba.NEWS file 
> (/usr/share/doc/samba/NEWS.gz), in
> a hope the user will read this info.? Apparently they aren't aware of 
> that.
>
> (When upgrading from bookworm to trixie, there will be release notes 
> document, where
> we'll mention this change in samba, - so this one will have a bit more 
> chances to be
> seen, at least).
>
> Thanks,
>
> /mjt
>
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Michael,

Maybe I can answer why so few are seeing the NEWS entries you created.? 
I checked all my Debian systems, and only one has apt-listchanges 
installed.? The systems were all done via a netinstall .iso.? I don't 
recall installing apt-listchanges on the one system, but I must have 
somewhere in time.? So, for any other individuals who installed the OS 
as I did, there is no NEWS mechanism by default.

Fortunately, I had read your changelog explanation on the list and 
installed the samba-ad-dc package after running the upgrade.? The one 
surprise that I got was that I had to reboot the upgraded DC before its 
processes would start.? Member servers and standalones successfully 
upgraded without a reboot.

Dale


On 7/5/24 12:55 AM, Michael Tokarev via samba wrote:
> 04.07.2024 21:27, Paul Leiber via samba wrote:
>> Dear Samba list,
>>
>> I have a Samba instance running as an ad-dc on debian bullseye. Some 
>> time ago, I changed the standard installation to backports with
>>
>> apt -t bullseye-backports install samba
>>
>> After a recent update, samba-ad-dc service didn't start anymore.
The
>> journal gave the following hint:
>>
>> Jul 04 20:05:37 xxx (samba)[5864]: samba-ad-dc.service: Failed at 
>> step EXEC spawning /usr/sbin/samba: No such file or directory
>
> Paul, others who also hit this issue.? I'm curious, I really am, - why 
> aren't you seeing the
> NEWS entries I've written.
>
> Debian packages has NEWS mechanism - important information which is 
> supposed to be presented
> to the user on package upgrades.? apt-listchanges package is 
> responsible for this -- it is
> a part of standard install, with Priority: standard, so it is 
> initially present on any
> debian system installed the regular way.? By default, NEWS entries, if 
> any, are displayed
> while upgrading a package, apt waits the user to acknowledge the reading.
>
> What prevents you and others from seeing these entries?
>
> I had another way to do this transition (moving some files from main 
> samba package to
> samba-ad-dc package).? For example, it's possible to make samba 
> Recommends: samba-ad-dc,
> so samba-ad-dc package will be installed most of the time (unless the 
> user disabled
> installing recommended packages, which is not recommended).? But I 
> don't want to do
> that, because samba-ad-dc has additional dependencies not needed by 
> samba.? So I went
> this way, adding the fine docs to samba.NEWS file 
> (/usr/share/doc/samba/NEWS.gz), in
> a hope the user will read this info.? Apparently they aren't aware of 
> that.
>
> (When upgrading from bookworm to trixie, there will be release notes 
> document, where
> we'll mention this change in samba, - so this one will have a bit more 
> chances to be
> seen, at least).
>
> Thanks,
>
> /mjt
>

Am 05.07.2024 um 07:55 schrieb Michael Tokarev:
> 04.07.2024 21:27, Paul Leiber via samba wrote:
>> Dear Samba list,
>>
>> I have a Samba instance running as an ad-dc on debian bullseye. Some 
>> time ago, I changed the standard installation to backports with
>>
>> apt -t bullseye-backports install samba
>>
>> After a recent update, samba-ad-dc service didn't start anymore.
The
>> journal gave the following hint:
>>
>> Jul 04 20:05:37 xxx (samba)[5864]: samba-ad-dc.service: Failed at step 
>> EXEC spawning /usr/sbin/samba: No such file or directory
> 
> Paul, others who also hit this issue.? I'm curious, I really am, - why 
> aren't you seeing the
> NEWS entries I've written.
> 
> Debian packages has NEWS mechanism - important information which is 
> supposed to be presented
> to the user on package upgrades.? apt-listchanges package is responsible 
> for this -- it is
> a part of standard install, with Priority: standard, so it is initially 
> present on any
> debian system installed the regular way.? By default, NEWS entries, if 
> any, are displayed
> while upgrading a package, apt waits the user to acknowledge the reading.
> 
> What prevents you and others from seeing these entries?
Hi Michael,

I am afraid I can't give you a definite answer to your question why I 
didn't see the NEWS entry.

I am a hobby user. I have a dozen or so headless Debian VMs running in 
my home network. Because the time to do the repetitive work of 
installing updates for each VM became quite significant, I am using 
unattended-upgrades package to automate installing updates. After having 
been bitten by some updates, ending up with non-functional VMs in some 
rare cases, I limited the unattended upgrades to debian-security, and 
this setup has been working generally fine for quite some time.

Unattended-upgrades sends e-mails from each VM after it has been doing 
something. I am not quite sure if NEWS entries would be shown in such an 
e-mail, but I am guessing that this is the case, as it is recommended to 
install apt-listchanges together with unattended-upgrades. I recently 
deleted my e-mail trashcan, so I can't check my e-mails for these NEWS 
entries. I will definitely pay attention in the future.

As the number of system e-mails with information on installed updated is 
quite high, I tend to just check which updates have been installed (in 
the first couple of lines in the e-mail) and skip the rest of the mail 
with dpkg logs and other information. So it could very well be that the 
NEWS entries have been sent to me via e-mail, and I didn't read the 
whole mail and thus didn't see the NEWS entry.

If the NEWS entry had been part of the automated e-mail from 
unattended-upgrades, it could have helped to add a Warning or something 
in the e-mail header and/or the first lines to check for NEWS entries, 
that would have increased the likelihood of me noticing it.

On top of that, I tend to watch the Samba mailing list, although I don't 
read every thread. The ones from you, Michael, I usually read, so it is 
quite likely that I have read your caveat on the upcoming changes, but I 
wasn't aware of that when sending my question to the list. Probably I 
simply forgot that fact. I did an internet search on my issue including 
the error message. I didn't find anything useful. This seems to 
corroborate my impression that mailing list content (also from other 
mailing lists, not only Samba) doesn't seem to be indexed/referenced 
very well by the google search engine.

I also guess that my case is similar to the one from Matthias K?hne in 
this thread, and I installed the update, but didn't restart the VM, so I 
didn't notice the change right away. I think that my last reboot before 
samba didn't work anymore had been a while ago. I checked dpkg and 
unattended-upgrades logs, but didn't find anything helpful.

Hope this helps a bit.

Thank you (and the whole Samba team, of course) for your work!

Paul