KDE 6.7 breaks the SMB service

BulletDust · June 18, 2026, 8:43am

With the advent of Plasma 6.7, I cannot get the smb.service to start, prior to the advent of Plasma 6.7 the SMB service was starting perfectly.

Journalctl logs below:

An ExecStart= process belonging to unit smbd.service has exited.
░░
░░ The process’ exit code is ‘exited’ and its exit status is 1.
Jun 18 17:10:32 mu-th-ur systemd[1]: smbd.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
░░ Subject: Unit failed
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support:

░░
░░ The unit smbd.service has entered the ‘failed’ state with result ‘exit-code’.
Jun 18 17:10:32 mu-th-ur systemd[1]: Failed to start smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon.
░░ Subject: A start job for unit smbd.service has failed
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support:

░░
░░ A start job for unit smbd.service has finished with a failure.
░░
░░ The job identifier is 10087 and the job result is failed.
Jun 18 17:12:04 mu-th-ur systemd[1]: Starting smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon…
░░ Subject: A start job for unit smbd.service has begun execution
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support:

░░
░░ A start job for unit smbd.service has begun execution.
░░
░░ The job identifier is 10207.
Jun 18 17:12:04 mu-th-ur (smbd)[73995]: smbd.service: Referenced but unset environment variable evaluates to an empty string: SMBDOPTIONS
Jun 18 17:12:04 mu-th-ur systemd[1]: smbd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
░░ Subject: Unit process exited
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support:

░░
░░ An ExecStart= process belonging to unit smbd.service has exited.
░░
░░ The process’ exit code is ‘exited’ and its exit status is 1.
Jun 18 17:12:04 mu-th-ur systemd[1]: smbd.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
░░ Subject: Unit failed
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support:

░░
░░ The unit smbd.service has entered the ‘failed’ state with result ‘exit-code’.
Jun 18 17:12:04 mu-th-ur systemd[1]: Failed to start smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon.
░░ Subject: A start job for unit smbd.service has failed
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support:

░░
░░ A start job for unit smbd.service has finished with a failure.
░░
░░ The job identifier is 10207 and the job result is failed.
lines 139-186/186 (END)

Systemctl smdb status below:

sudo systemctl status smbd.service
× smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/smbd.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2026-06-18 17:12:04 AEST; 3min 30s ago
Docs: man:smbd(8)
man:samba(7)
man:smb.conf(5)
Process: 73992 ExecCondition=/usr/share/samba/is-configured smb (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 73995 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/smbd --foreground --no-process-group $SMBDOPTIONS (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 73995 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
CPU: 42ms

Jun 18 17:12:04 mu-th-ur systemd[1]: Starting smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon…
Jun 18 17:12:04 mu-th-ur (smbd)[73995]: smbd.service: Referenced but unset environment variable evaluates to an empty string: SMBDOPTIONS
Jun 18 17:12:04 mu-th-ur systemd[1]: smbd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 18 17:12:04 mu-th-ur systemd[1]: smbd.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
Jun 18 17:12:04 mu-th-ur systemd[1]: Failed to start smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon.

Samba status under Properties > Share below:

Error when trying to stat the smdb.service via the GUI:

System details as follows:

Operating System: KDE neon User Edition
KDE Plasma Version: 6.7.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.27.0
Qt Version: 6.11.1
Kernel Version: 6.17.0-35-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 28 × Intel® Core™ i9-10940X CPU @ 3.30GHz
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (31.0 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER

No matter what I do, I cannot get the service to start, prior to the latest 6.7 update everything was running fine. I also have a CachyOS system here running Plasma 6.6.5, SMB shares work perfectly on that system. I’m too scared to update to 6.7 on that system, but will do so if it means isolating the root of the problem here.

barryascott · June 18, 2026, 9:21am

Check the logs in the system journal sudo journalctl -b 0 -u smb.
Do you see errors reported about the smb.conf file?

If so you will need to fix them to make smb.service.
Someone else reported issues and found problems in smb.conf.

BulletDust · June 18, 2026, 9:23am

There’s no entries, probably because the service refuses to even start:

sudo journalctl -b 0 -u smb
[sudo] password for matt:
-- No entries --
matt@mu-th-ur ~

anon88727970 · June 18, 2026, 9:37am

Can confirm.

I have an SMB share, which I can still connect to fine using a system on an older version of Plasma. On Fedora 44, with Plasma 6.7, I can’t connect to the SMB share at all.

EDIT:

I can still access my share if go via the IP address smb://192.168.<blah>.<blah>/NAS/ but not via the hostname smb://nas/NAS/

barryascott · June 18, 2026, 10:21am

What does systemctl status smb.service report?

barryascott · June 18, 2026, 10:22am

My bad your smb is called smbd not smb as it is on Fedora.

Try this:

sudo journalctl -b 0 -u smbd

BulletDust · June 18, 2026, 10:37am

So I copied my smb.conf from my CachyOS system to my KDE Neon system and now things seem to be working again. However whatever caused the problem seemed to be related to the update from 6.6.5 to 6.7, as everything was working perfectly right up until I performed the update?

EastCoast · June 18, 2026, 10:41am

I had posted the same issue yesterday, here is my workaround.

Edit /etc/samba/neon-usershares-smb.conf, it should look similar to below:

[globals]

usershare path = /var/lib/samba/usershares
usershare max shares = 100
usershare allow guests = yes
usershare owner only = yes

Next you need to change the permissions on /var/lib/samba/usershares to allow members of sambashare write access:

sudo chmod 1757 /var/lib/samba/usershares

barryascott · June 18, 2026, 10:42am

You could report this as a bug in the KDE bugtracker as this is the 2nd time I have heard of this bug.

BulletDust · June 18, 2026, 10:43am

I also changed these very permissions, should have mentioned that.

How do I do this?

barryascott · June 18, 2026, 10:51am

I web searched for “kde bug tracker” and it leads here https://bugs.kde.org/index.cgi

I have no experience of using the kde bug tracker.

BulletDust · June 18, 2026, 10:54am

Me neither. Anyone from the KDE team able to offer advice? As it’s obviously a problem.

ngraham · June 18, 2026, 1:29pm

Plasma 6.7 won’t be the cause of this as SMB sits at a lower layer of the software stack. It could be a distro misconfiguration though, or an incompatibility introduced with a newer SMB version.

anon88727970 · June 18, 2026, 2:00pm

Looks like the Fedora packages for KDE 6.6.5 are gone from the repo, so a downgrade won’t work for me to be able to A/B test on the same machine.

It looks like my issue is different than what’s being reported by everyone else, I’ll assume Fedora done goofed on the packaging again.

EastCoast · June 18, 2026, 2:21pm

It appears to be a misconfiguration with the Neon distribution. Here is the link to the post I made yesterday, in which I dig into the root cause. Neon 6.7.0 and Samba Shares

pg-tips · June 18, 2026, 2:26pm

You should be able to download to the immediately previous version if you use the updates-archive repo:

sudo dnf install fedora-repos-archive
sudo dnf config-manager setopt updates-archive.enabled=no
sudo dnf downgrade <whatever packages> --enablerepo=updates-archive

anon88727970 · June 18, 2026, 2:38pm

Oh, is that where they live now? Many thanks!

I’ll try that and report back after downgrading.

EDIT: Can confirm, reverting plasma packages to 6.6.5 on Fedora allows me to connect to an SMB share using the hostname. With 6.7 name resolution doesn’t work, you have to use the IP address. Will assume it’s a Fedora issue, since I couldn’t replicate this on CachyOS.