Ubuntu 20.10 sssd (System Security Services Daemon) failure

Question

Don't know why, but they decided to add sssd (System Security Services Daemon) to the standard Ubuntu 20.10 upgrade and fresh install. It fails to start, and generates lots of error messages. It's not configured at install time, as it's missing the required /etc/sssd/sssd.conf file.

SSSD is a system daemon. Its primary function is to provide access to local or remote identity and authentication resources through a common framework that can provide caching and offline support to the system. It provides several interfaces, including NSS and PAM modules or a D-Bus interface.

You can see the failure with:

systemctl status sssd

Solution

There are at least three possible fixes.

Fix #1:

Disable sssd from starting on systems where it's not needed.

sudo systemctl stop sssd
sudo systemctl disable sssd

Fix #2:

sudo cp /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sssd/conf/sssd.conf /etc/sssd/.
sudo chmod 600 /etc/sssd/sssd.conf 
sudo systemctl enable sssd
sudo systemctl start sssd

Source: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2452209&p=13994052

Fix #3:

Properly configure sssd, using /etc/sssd/sssd.conf, to your site's specific needs. See man sssd.conf for more information.