Why do I get an initscript error when installing Samba using apt-get?

• Either you somehow still have a running nmbd, or a stray pidfile, in which case kill the nmbd process, remove the pidfile, and run dpkg --configure nmbd;

• or you're seeing the same error as before the reinstall, which was due not to samba itself but a dependency (such as libwbclient0 or libtalloc2 or libc6 or the kernel or the hardware). Does running nmbd -i also produce a stack trace? Did you upgrade one of the dependencies lately? Did you run a memory test lately?

I had the same problem, only I had manually disabled both smbd and nmbd before, but could not remember how I did it.

Check if you can start smbd and nmbd by trying to start both: /etc/init.d/_mbd start and then testing both to see if they're still running /etc/init.d/_mbd status. If they are still not running, try making sure the init conf files for both still exist: /etc/init/_mbd.conf.