[CentOS] Odd failure of smbd to start from init.d - CentOS 5.4

Fri May 21 14:44:27 UTC 2010
Whit Blauvelt <whit at transpect.com>

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 10:04:36AM -0400, Ross Walker wrote:

> By any chance did someone add smbd to xinetd?
> 
> If so then xinetd has the port open and the smbd process will not bind.

Nope. Not sure that would explain why a slight difference in how it's
invoked, through the same init.d script, makes the difference in whether it
runs. That is:

sh /etc/init.d/smb start (and "/usr/sbin/smbd -D")

which always works from console, differs from

/etc/init.d/smb start (and "service smb start" too)

which doesn't ever work on this box, how? This is when smb starts with
"#!/bin/sh" anyway. Only thing I can figure is that there may be a subtle
difference in timing, a slowing down just enough to make the startup
tolerant of hardware that's right on the margin. There's no significant
difference (if any) in envars.

After questioning everything else - including close comparison to some
Redhat 5.4 systems with smbd starting fine - by elimination the hardware
seems the only thing left to question. But I'm still open to ideas.

Thanks,
Whit