For last half a year VFS modules were unable to get loaded in FreeBSD 5.x. The
error message was quite misleading:

Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]: [2004/11/20 13:21:52, 0]
lib/module.c:do_smb_load_module(57)
Nov 20 13:21:52 wader kernel: Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]: [2004/11/20
13:21:52, 0] lib/module.c:do_smb_load_module(57)
Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]:   Error trying to resolve symbol
'init_module' in /usr/local/lib/samba/vfs/recycle.so
: Shared object "nss_files.so.1" not found, required by "smbd"
Nov 20 13:21:52 wader kernel: Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]:   Error trying
to resolve symbol 'init_module' in /usr/local/lib/samba/vfs/recycle.so: Shared
object "nss_files.so.1" not found, required by "smbd"
Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]: [2004/11/20 13:21:52, 0]
smbd/vfs.c:vfs_init_custom(256)
Nov 20 13:21:52 wader kernel: Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]: [2004/11/20
13:21:52, 0] smbd/vfs.c:vfs_init_custom(256)
Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]:   Can't find a vfs module [recycle]
Nov 20 13:21:52 wader kernel: Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]:   Can't find a
vfs module [recycle]
Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]: [2004/11/20 13:21:52, 0]
smbd/vfs.c:smbd_vfs_init(319)
Nov 20 13:21:52 wader kernel: Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]: [2004/11/20
13:21:52, 0] smbd/vfs.c:smbd_vfs_init(319)
Nov 20 13:21:52 wader smbd[87549]:   smbd_vfs_init: vfs_init_custom failed for
recycle

The funny thing is that nss_files.so not meant to exist at all in FreeBSD. So,
after sevire digging into the changes in the OS code the real cause was found.
To make long thing short, the problem lays in the way how dlopen/dlsym is used
in Samba.

It's technically possible, that dlopen() get non-fatal error(s) during
execution(or, better call them warnings)that dlerror() will happily return
later. Unfortunatelly, if you'll make call to dlsym() after such dlopen() with
warning, and then check failure of dlsym() via call to dlopen() - you'll get an
error from a previous stage, dlopen().

As Samba uses that error as the only indication of dlsym() failure, any VFS
module can't be loaded...

The cure is amasingly simple - just call dlerror() explicitly before the call to
dlsym().

At least on Debian Linux man pages especially stress that way of dealing with
dynamic loading.

With regards,
Timur Bakeyev.