1w ago

Problem getting Samba to work

I've installed Samba on my Debian 12 home server but can't get it to start. I ran:

    
sudo systemctl start smbd
sudo systemctl status smbd

Here is the output:

    
   Duration: 7h 25min 18.079s
  Condition: start condition failed at Fri 2025-02-14 17:13:11 EST; 14min ago
       Docs: man:smbd(8)
             man:samba(7)
             man:smb.conf(5)
    Process: 598599 ExecCondition=/usr/share/samba/is-configured smb (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
        CPU: 1ms
Feb 14 17:13:11 harvee systemd[1]: Starting smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon...
Feb 14 17:13:11 harvee systemd[1]: smbd.service: Skipped due to 'exec-condition'.
Feb 14 17:13:11 harvee systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon being skipped.

The install also doesn't seem to have created a samba configuration directory in /etc or a log in /var/log

I'm stumped. Googling turns up a lot of people accidentally checking the status of 'samba' instead of 'smbd', but I'm not finding much on this issue. What am I doing wrong?

8 comments

I have samba running on Debian 12 at home but it's been a while since I configured it. I'll look it over when I get a chance to jog my memory, but if I remember correctly you're missing a package.
- I'll appreciate it if you have a chance to check. I ran sudo apt update --fix-missing and didn't see anything.
  
  cifs-utils was the package I was thinking of. This article is more or less the same as what I did to get it running.
  
  Thank you. Removed the samba package and installed following the instructions. It still didn't create a config or a log file. I'll keep troubleshooting.
  
  Try creating your own smb.conf file from scratch using this Samba wiki page as reference, I believe Debian doesn't create one for you. https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Setting_up_Samba_as_a_Standalone_Server
  
  Thank you, creating my own config file from scratch worked. Not sure if I'm remembering wrong. For some reason I thought in the past it was created with the install.