With systemd the /run or /var/run are tmpfs filesystems. This means the direcories required by samba need to be created during startup. This can be done with a config file for tmpfiles, see samba.conf.tmp. You need to copy this file to the directoy systemd-tmpfiles is looking for its config files e.g.: install -d -m 0755 /etc/tmpfiles.d/ install -m644 samba.conf.tmp /etc/tmpfiles.d/samba.conf If you're a packager don't forget to run the systemd-tmpfiles binary in the script after samba has been installed. This makes sure the directory exists and you can start samba directly after the installation. /usr/bin/systemd-tmpfiles --create /etc/tmpfiles.d/samba.conf