Ubuntu Server 16.04 SSSD Not Loading

Question

I am attempting to authenticate my Ubuntu 16.04 server to an AD but having trouble loading SSSD. My sssd.conf file looks like this:

[sssd]
services = nss, pam
config_file_version = 2
domains = MYDOMAIN.LOCAL
id_provider = ad
access_provider = ad
override_homedir = /home/%d/%u

It is owned by root:root and file permission is set to 600. When attempting to start SSSD, systemctl reports the following:

● sssd.service - System Security Services Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/sssd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2016-06-03 08:06:46 EDT; 9s ago
  Process: 6979 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/sssd -D -f (code=exited, status=4)

Jun 03 08:06:46 tempsvr systemd[1]: Starting System Security Services Daemon...
Jun 03 08:06:46 tempsvr sssd[6979]: SSSD couldn't load the configuration database [2]: No such file or directory.
Jun 03 08:06:46 tempsvr systemd[1]: sssd.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=4
Jun 03 08:06:46 tempsvr systemd[1]: Failed to start System Security Services Daemon.
Jun 03 08:06:46 tempsvr systemd[1]: sssd.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jun 03 08:06:46 tempsvr systemd[1]: sssd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Am I overlooking something? Thanks!!

Answer 1

One potential cause of this issue could be a missing sssd.conf configuration file. The sssd.conf file is required for SSSD to function properly, and it should contain the relevant configuration for SSSD to connect to your Active Directory (AD) domain. If the file is missing, you can try creating it by copying the default configuration file from the /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sssd/conf/sssd.conf directory to /etc/sssd/ and setting the appropriate permissions:

sudo cp /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sssd/conf/sssd.conf /etc/sssd/
sudo chmod 600 /etc/sssd/sssd.conf

Make sure that the sssd.conf file is owned by the root user and group, and that the file permissions are set to 600. This will ensure that only the root user has access to the file and can read and write to it.

If you have recently upgraded from Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 20.10, it's possible that the upgrade process may have caused issues with the SSSD configuration. In this case, you may want to try reinstalling the sssd package to see if that resolves the issue:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --reinstall sssd

After making any changes to the sssd.conf file or the sssd package, be sure to restart the SSSD service to apply the changes:

sudo systemctl restart sssd.service

If the issue persists after trying these steps, you may want to check the logs for more information. The SSSD logs are typically located in the /var/log/sssd directory, and may contain additional information about the cause of the issue.

Answer 2

I ran into a similar problem when upgrading to 16.04. I can't tell you what the source of your problem is but the following will provide a lot more useful information to help figure it out:

$ sudo sssd -d9 -i