Hello, 

updating AIX  from 7.2 TL4 to 7.2 TL5 SP7 caused Samba to stop  working with below error on startup: 

root@srvaps34 /etc/samba #/etc/rc.d/init.d/smbd start
Starting Samba smbd daemon... Could not load program /opt/freeware/sbin/smbd:
        Dependent module libpopt.so could not be loaded.
Could not load module libpopt.so.

samba version is old :

root@srvaps35 /tmp #rpm -qa
samba-4.9.4-1.ppc
samba-winbind-clients-4.9.4-1.ppc
samba-winbind-devel-4.9.4-1.ppc
samba-python-4.9.4-1.ppc
samba-all-4.9.4-1.ppc
samba-common-4.9.4-1.ppc
samba-libs-4.9.4-1.ppc
samba-client-4.9.4-1.ppc
samba-winbind-4.9.4-1.ppc

samba-winbind-krb5-locator-4.9.4-1.ppc
samba-devel-4.9.4-1.ppc

popt-1.16-2.ppc

...

but I suspect the problem comes from the rpm.rte update, because under 

 AIX 7.2 TL4 :    rpm.rte                  4.13.0.11    C     F    RPM Package Manager

find / -name libpopt.so -print  displays :

/opt/freeware/lib/libpopt.so

/usr/lib/libpopt.so

/usr/opt/rpm/lib/libpopt.so 

and now under AIX 7.2 TL5 SP7 :  rpm.rte             4.15.1.1011

the same command indicates only: 

/opt/freeware/lib/libpopt.so

/usr/lib/libpopt.so

Is there  a way to  temporarily  resolve this issue (before updating all the rpms by installing/using dnf)   ?

Maybe  adding some additionnal paths to PATH like  /opt/freeware/lib ... ?

thank you in advance for your help

Michel