Red Hat Knowledgebase

Troubleshooting Samba problems require an understanding of your network configuration and a definition of your goals. Below is a list of items and questions that are helpful when troubleshooting Samba related issues.

Samba Checklist:

• What version of Samba are you currently running? Use rpm -q samba to show you.
• Are there any helpful messages in the log files? Look in /var/log/samba for the default log location files.
• Did you upgrade Samba versions and something stopped working?
• Is the Samba service running? What is the output of: service smb status?
• Is there a firewall (hardware or software) that could be blocking the ports or services that Samba requires? iptables -L will show you your iptables rules.
• Are other applications and services functioning on the system as you would expect? Are there any other strange things happening to your system that could be related to your Samba issue?

If you are going to submit an issue to Red Hat for a Samba related problem, we will require the following information to help expedite your problem and resolve it quicker.

Customers can gather this information and submit a web ticket at https://www.redhat.com/apps/support/ after logging into your account. To submit a web ticket, you will have a Web Support button under your Active Support Entitlements that can take you to our ticketing system.

• A detailed description of your problem.
• A list of the Samba packages and versions installed: rpm -qa | grep samba
• Your Samba configuration file: /etc/samba/smb.conf
• Error logs (this command will get all Samba log files from the default log location):
  tar cvfz /tmp/samba-logs.tgz /var/log/samba/*
• A detailed description of your network. Things to consider when writing the network description:
  • Are you using a Workgroup or a Domain?
  • If using a Domain, what type of Domain Controllers are being used?
  • Which version of Windows are being used as servers? as clients?
  • What type of security modes are you using?
  • What types of Samba Shares and access controls are you implementing?
  • Are there any proxy servers or firewalls on your network? If so, describe.
• What are you trying to accomplish with your Samba implementation? (What are your goals?)
• Has anything changed recently in your set-up that could have caused any errors you are seeing? A hardware change, an physical network change, a package upgrade/downgrade?
• When do you experience the problem and is it reproducible?
• What are the steps you have taken to configure Samba for the way it is currently set-up?