How do I re-install Samba?

Question

I recently followed a guide to configure Samba but I couldn't get it configured properly. After realizing that the guide was six years out of date I thought I should start again.

I reinstalled samba by first using these commands:

sudo apt-get purge samba
sudo apt-get install samba

But after reading my configuration file (/etc/samba/smb.conf) I noticed that it was the same file, containing the same edits I had made. I then proceeded to delete the directory and then re-install samba again.

However, the directory is not replaced after re-instillation and now I don't appear to have a configuration file. How do I get it back? Or install Samba correctly?

Solution 1

^{Yes, already posted in the comments as a verified solution, but posting as an answer anyway.}

Purging should indeed remove the configuration files as well, yet the configuration of the Samba server is tracked by the package samba-common, not samba. Yes, it's a bit confusing.

So, try purging and re-installing both packages like this:

sudo apt-get purge samba samba-common
sudo apt-get install samba

Solution 2

If you only need the smb.conf configuration file, there is no need to reinstall samba. The default copy can be found in /usr/share/samba/smb.conf. The following will copy it to /etc/samba/, replacing the file you've been editing:

sudo cp /usr/share/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/

Comments

[Admin]

Samba's configuration is managed by the package samba-common. Have you tried to purge and re-install that package? This might actually not work still, as the Debian/Ubuntu package maintainers of Samba decided to use ucf for configuration management.

[Admin]

@gertvdijk if you provide this as an answer then I can mark it as correct.

[Sheldon]

I wonder if you can help me with this one as well. I'm trying to start samba but I get unknown service. I've tried sudo /etc/init.d/samba start, sudo service smbd start but that doesn't work. Also, the /etc/init.d/samba file doesn't seem to exist.

[gertvdijk]

There really is a file /etc/init.d/smbd in the package samba. See this. sudo service smbd restart should work. It's already started after install, so use restart.

[mc0e]

This won't do much. IF your samba installation is up to date it will do precisely nothing.