I recently had to reconfigure my linux (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS) servers.
I had previously used these two howto’s to configure my servers.
Suddenly one of them refused to properly connect with various error messages:

# wbinfo -p
Ping to winbindd failed

# wbinfo -u
Error looking up domain users

# wbinfo -t
checking the trust secret via RPC calls failed
Could not check secret

After a week of googling I finally found the following solution, which did the trick for me.

  • Stop smbd, nmbd and winbindd (make sure they are really dead using ps. winbindd still lingered after I stopped the service)
  • Delete the linux computer from the Primary Domain Controller (using the Management Console)
  • Delete the secrets database (/var/lib/samba/secrets.tdb)
  • Join the domain again
  • Start the daemons (smbd, nmbd and winbindd)
  • Test the winbind commands to see that everything is working