Windows Backup Cannot Verify Network Share

[sechs]

I've switched over to my new server running FreeNAS and, except for CrashPlan needing to reanalyze every file because the last modified date has changed, it works great. However, Windows Backup now no longer will validate CIFS shares from the new box for saving backups.

This isn't a problem with the NAS. All of the permissions are correct, and other installations of Win7 can verify and use the shares. Heck, I can even see the old backups, but it won't make new ones. So, it's something peculiar with this particular setup.

I've done a lot of poking around the 'net, and haven't found much useful. I am out of troubleshooting steps.

Ideas?

 

[Mercutio]

File ownership issue?

 

[sechs]

It's fine. As I said, other Windows installs can use the shares; I fed them the same login information.

Anyway, the issue is that it won't even allow me to set the server as the destination location, because it cannot verify it.

 

[Mercutio]

Do you back up on any of the other machines to that share?

 

[sechs]

No, because the problem is getting Windows crapup to verify the share.

I should also mention that previously scheduled backups also fail, with error code 0x800704B3, which is, basically, network path cannot be found.

 

[sechs]

So, I've discovered the root of this problem: Windows is retarded.

CrashPlan currently doesn't generally support backing up of network drives because of Windows security. The work around for this is to setup a batch file to automatically mount the shares at login as SYSTEM. This ran flawlessly for several months with the old NAS.

After switching over to the new FreeNAS-based server, Windows Backup decides to shit a brick over this mounting setup. After clearing all of the existing CIFS connections in both the SYSTEM and user accounts, and disabling the task that runs the batch file, Windows Backup is happy again. The problem now is that CrashPlan cannot backup the shares, again.

My thought was to just set up a special read-only NFS share which CrashPlan could use for the backups, but Windows cannot connect to the server. Hopefully, I'll have some time later this week to figure out what's broken there.

 

[Mercutio]

Have you tried mounting your shares via iSCSI? I believe those show up as local drives for all intents and purposes.

 

[sechs]

After doing some research, I've found that FreeNAS needs a little massaging for NFS to work with Windows. This is made difficult by the fact that a lot of the configuration files aren't permanently changeable, as I am running from a USB stick.

iSCSI seems like the next logical choice, but I've never set it up before.

 

[sechs]

iSCSI works pretty much flawlessly, but the size of the shared extent is fixed. So, the space is no longer fungible.

I spent some time yesterday examining the NFS issues, and it's something to do with the RPC/portmapper on the server end. I fired up a VM with Knoppix, and it cannot connect either; that means that it's not just a Windows issue.

 

[sechs]

I got NFS working, although not on a permanent basis; rebooting the NAS will make the necessary changes go away.

However, Windows Backup won't use an NFS share. And because I would have to mount each ZFS dataset individually, it's unwieldy to use for CrashPlan.

Back to the drawing board, I guess.

 

[MaxBurn]

Me too, windows backup won't go to either a time capsule HFS+ or a exFAT volume for apparently similar reasons. If it would simply drop a file on a drive all of this would be resolved.

 

[Mercutio]

There's always third party utilities.

 

[sechs]

The new plan is to work around CrashPlan's lack of network support in a different fashion.

I changed its service to run as the local user, rather than system. It should be able to see shares made under that account, but can't. It does, however, seem to be able to see symlinks to the shares.

I'm going to lose a couple of days for upload time while CrashPlan determines that the files in the new location are exactly the same as the files which it has already uploaded, but it looks like it'll work. Once it's caught up, I'll remove the mappings as System and remap the shares as user.

 

[lapicito]

The new plan is to work around CrashPlan's lack of network support in a different fashion.

I changed its service to run as the local user, rather than system. It should be able to see shares made under that account, but can't. It does, however, seem to be able to see symlinks to the shares.

I'm going to lose a couple of days for upload time while CrashPlan determines that the files in the new location are exactly the same as the files which it has already uploaded, but it looks like it'll work. Once it's caught up, I'll remove the mappings as System and remap the shares as user.

Hi, i'm new into this and i'm having the same problem.

Did you find a work-around to this problem and if so what did you do???

Thanks so much.