Diagnosing permission problems with Cobian Backup to network share
I'm running the latest Cobian 11. I have a Synology DS412 NAS. All of my machines (Mac and Windows) access this just fine when I'm logged in and I browse to it manually.
I have Cobian installed as a service on two Windows machines: WinXP SP3 and Win7 x64. On both machines, the service is set to log on with my user account which is in the Windows administrator group. Backups on both machines fail with the message "Couldn't create the destination directory "\\nas1\backups\foo\bar\": The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect".
- I have tried setting the NAS's share to allow anonymous read/write access but it made no difference. Although I want the backups to run unattended in the middle of the night, I have tested them by running them manually while I'm logged in but no luck.
- Before starting that, I make sure that I can browse to the NAS with Explorer to ensure that any authentication session with Windows and the NAS has not expired. Still no luck.
- I have tried creating that destination directory both on the NAS before the backup and deleting it so the backup job could create it with the client's credentials but no luck.
The usual answer in the Cobian support forums is that there is a permission problem. I agree. But at this point, what can I do to diagnose this further?
It is because you are running the program as a SERVICE. By default Cobian installs as a SERVICE. Re-install the program as a APPLICATION and the problem will go away.
NOTE: If you have created a few tasks make sure you Save/export them from the file menu before you uninstall Cobian so you can re-import them after the uninstall re-install.
I am having the same problem. I found a ugly workaround, but works
for me.
If anyone's interested, it's below, copied from here.
Hi !
To circumvent the Cobian behavior [to replace a foldername with it's UNC representation for a destination] one can do this:
Part 1, some config:
CD into the Cobian installation folder
create a directory, say mnt [like unix mount]
Use Cobian, open a task and change/create the destination as usual, to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Cobian Backup 11\mnt\toBackup" [don't worry ;-)]
after this, remove the "toBackup" folder in windows explorer
Part 2, create s pre/post job for the task.
a) pre-event
map a network drive, but just the UNC name, WITHOUT directory, like this:
net use \remServer\remShare /user:username password [one may verify this through >net use]
use LINKD to map this network connection into the previosly created subdir [mnt]:
mklink /d "C:\Program Files (x86)\Cobian Backup 11\mnt\toBackup" \remServer\remShare [regard the identical name for the "toBackup" destination]
If this has beeen executed in the pre-event, Cobian see's the remote drive in the local subfolder [for which it was configured].
b) post-event
- rd /s /q "C:\Program Files (x86)\Cobian Backup 11\mnt\toBackup" [dont worry: This does not delete your files! {1}]
- net use \remServer\remShare /d /y
Keep these commands in exact this order.
Everythings runs fine this way, because the cobian process does not need authentication. Note: This needs Windows7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
An ugly workaround, but does the job. I can not understand, why Cobian can not directly open network connections to a server under a specific username. It is not that complicated.
Best regards,
++mabra
{1} Make proper tests. I'll not give any guarantee here. It was just working properly for me.