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In light of recent Wannacry and "sambracry" exploits - it seems wise to simply uninstall Samba. (over and above config changes to disable the oldest protocols)

I installed Samba a while ago (years) to access Windows shared folders, but no longer use it.

Are there any odd things that use or depend on Samba other than sharing folders and printers to and from windows machines?

What consequences am I likely to face (if any) if I uninstall Samba.

Edit: more information. Running: 

apt-cache rdepends samba --installed

(thanks to this answer) outputs the following list - most of it is looks like other components of Samba - but there are other things such as nautilus-share that sound unrelated.

samba
Reverse Depends:
  libpam-winbind
  libnss-winbind
  winbind
  smbclient
  samba-vfs-modules
  samba-libs
  samba-libs
  samba-common-bin
  samba-common
  samba
  libwbclient0
  libpam-winbind
  libnss-winbind
  winbind
  smbclient
  samba-vfs-modules
  samba-libs
  samba-common-bin
  samba-common
  samba
  nautilus-share
  libwbclient0
Andrew M
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  • Samba is not installed by default in Ubuntu, and no file sharing is enabled, but if it makes you feel safer, you can uninstall it anyway. – mikewhatever May 26 '17 at 12:58
  • @mikewhatever I have it installed (because I installed it) - but I think you're saying "no - no consequences to uninstalling" - do you want to put that into an answer for votes and acceptedness? – Andrew M May 26 '17 at 13:53
  • If you installed it you can uninstall it and its dependencies by `apt-get remove --purge samba` than if any of the dependecies is used also by another program, it won't get removed. Samba itself is not just for filesharing but might also be used for user and group administration. But if you didn't use that than there should not be any consequences on removing it again. – derHugo May 26 '17 at 14:26
  • I don't know exactly but I guess the nautilus share thing might be some sort of samba front-end plug-in for the nautilus file browser. So if you don't use samba you can't share files => you dont need this neither – derHugo May 26 '17 at 14:30
  • Thanks @derHugo First person to paste these comments into an answer get the accepted probably! – Andrew M May 26 '17 at 14:31
  • Comment for the question closers. Reading the standard opinion-based reason - I'm not sure I agree. The answer given (converted from comments) seems to me clearly fact based in clear contrast to the statement "...but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions". I think it's useful for the community - especially at the moment. I can (and will) edit to change the wording to be less opnion based - but that will just be semantic changes. – Andrew M May 29 '17 at 21:40
  • "What consequences am I likely to face (if any) if I uninstall Samba" ... That's still not good enough. Who can say with any certainty? – muru May 30 '17 at 02:27

1 Answers1

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If you installed it you can uninstall it and its dependencies by apt-get remove --purge samba than if any of the dependecies is used also by another program, it won't get removed.

Samba anyway itself is not just for filesharing but might also be used for user and group administration. But if you didn't use that than there should not be any consequences on removing it again.

And I don't know exactly but I guess the nautilus share thing might only be some sort of samba front-end plug-in for the nautilus file browser. So if you don't use samba you can't share files => you dont need this neither

derHugo
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    `remove` will only remove the package itself and its *reverse* dependencies. If you want to remove the (forward) dependencies of a package you need to use or follow up with `autoremove`. – David Foerster May 30 '17 at 05:27