I guess your system could have been compromised if the firewall was off.. I
dont know if your network is behind a firewall or not. the first place I usually
look is at other priveleged users with access. accidental sabotage from within
is a frequent occurance.
if your system/network is wide open.. turn iptables back on.
I would check the history for root and grep for 'rm'
to attempt a culprit
then check out /var/log/messages
try 'rpm -qa | grep -i smb' or 'rpm -qa | grep -i samba'
check for the existance of the smb executable.
'which smb' (as root)
we know the init script exists and your system is attempting to start it at
runtime maybe the binary is in the wring place or the permissions are wrong
on /etc/samba/smb.conf
if this file/directory is missing you may be able to recreate the directory then
run system-config-samba to recreate smb.conf. (as root naturally)
you could try this:
'man smbd' and look for a debuglevel switch (usually like -d0 or -d6
sometimes is -v ) and a foreground switch (dontfork option)
tail /var/log/messages
start samba manually as a foreground process (in debug mode, dont fork if
you can) and check out the logs and the output
Hope this helps,
Cain