NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hi everyone,

I'm having a problem using Rsync to sync files from my wife's laptop to my NAS running Naslite-2 2.06. I use Delta Copy on her laptop to do the Rsync. This has been working fine for months, but recently Delta Copy started sending me error emails every day that permission was denied to access the folder on the NAS. There are two folders in particular, and they are both newer folders. When I look at them from her WinXP laptop I don't see anything unusual, but when I check from my Vista PC and look at the security tab under folder properties, I've noticed the following things (the name of my NASlite box is "SERVER"):

All folders except the two problem folders below are assigned to the following groups: Everyone, nobody (SERVER\nobody), and NAS-User (SERVER\NAS-User)

The two folders giving me problems are only assigned to: nobody (SERVER\nobody)

Obviously that's the problem, but I can't figure out how to fix it. I tried to add another group to the folder, but when I clicked add it got the following error message: "The program cannot open the required dialog box because it cannot determine whether the computer named "SERVER" is joined to a domain. Close this message, and try again." Closing and trying again doesn't do anything because I do not have a domain set up.

The problem folders are subdirectories of another directory. Should I just try whacking the entire directory from the very top and Rsyncing the whole thing again? Is there a way I can fix it without doing that?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Gary

Try your suggestion and delete the folders prior to syncing.

Hi Tony,

I completely deleted the entire directory and subdirectories from the NASlite box and ran the Rsync job using DeltaCopy again, but the problem persists. The two problem directories end up with the same permissions problem and Rsync fails. I even tried creating new folders on the XP machine and moving the files over to those and deleting the problem directories. The new directories end up with the same problem. One of these directories contains about 40 jpgs and the other contains some Quicken data files, so I'm stumped as to what the problem could be.

Any other ideas to try?

Thanks for your help,

Gary

Are those folders or files within them locked by an application on the client while the backup is in progress?

No - I made sure nothing was running that would have been using those directories or files. Further details - the directory with the jpgs is a subdirectory of the "My Pictures" directory. There are several subdirectories there, all with jpgs in them. Just this one is giving me a problem. Now that I think about it, I believe the two directories giving me the problem are the last two directories created. I think tonight when I get home I will try and create another new directory and just put a text file in it to see if I have the problem with that one, too. I'm not aware of any changes to this laptop that would have caused this.

For these two directories, the directory gets created on the NASlite box, but it can't be accessed. Rsync can't access the directory (per the failure email from DeltaCopy), and when I tried doing it with Windows Explorer from both XP and Vista I'm told I don't have permission. I was at least able to see the "security" tab in Vista to see that the folder on the NASlite box only belonged to the group "nobody". Strange since Rsync is creating the folder. This leads me to believe there is a problem with the permissions on the client that gets duplicated on the server, but since the log in on the XP client has administrator privileges you don't see it there. There ARE user accounts on the XP laptop I'm syncing (but they do not use passwords) and it uses NTFS, but since I don't log into a domain there is no "security" tab in the properties window that opens when I check these folders. DeltaCopy runs under my wife's log in, and she has administrator privileges on the laptop.

I'm not sure what else to check. Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks again,

Gary

Ok...I just created a new folder on my wife's laptop and put one text file in it. Closed everything and ran DeltaCopy. Same problem with this new folder. It was created, but nothing could be written to it on the NASlite box. Same deal with the permissions...only assigned to the group "nobody". Deleted everything I had just created and reran DeltaCopy - the folder was deleted from the NASlite box.

I'm not sure where else to try at this point.

~Gary

Ok ... obviously this is not a NL problem directly. And I'll admit I haven't looked at it carefully, but I quickly did a google with the following three terms "deltacopy permissions linux" ... and two links on the first results-page stood out

http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DisplayFAQ.do?fid=8
http://support.svi.nl/wiki/RsyncOnWindows
(With the second link look all the way at the bottom ... "If you want to change the permissions of the transferred files" ... not sure if this will solve your issue.)

Remember ... "Google is your friend" ... and I hope this can help you ...
Georg

Hi Georg,

I had already Googled 'till my fingers were about to bleed, but nothing was working. After my last post I took a different approach and tried to see what was up with the folders on the XP laptop and found the problem. I was unaware you could only see the security tab on folders in XP by booting into safe mode, but once I learned that the problem became apparent.

Under my wife's login, her name had been removed as a user of her My Documents folder! Any folder she created after that change was made was not syncing via Rsync because of the permission problem I noted in my ealier post. There was some cryptic name assigned to that folder along with the usual "System" and "Administrators" items. I added her back and deleted the unknown user (it was a long string of numbers and letters and was definitely NOT a user set up on that PC). I had to go delete the folders on the NASlite box that had been created before I fixed the users above, but after doing that Delta Copy ran just fine.

I did a virus scan on her PC and everything came out ok, so I'm not sure how the user thingy got messed up. I'll have to keep an eye on it for a while, but it's working just fine again!

Thanks everyone,

Gary

Gary:

Great follow-up ... thanks. I have seen this issue (strange numeric user id) ... it was may be a] when I tried Vista, did not like it and went back to XP, or b] after reinstalling XP from scratch. It's all a Microsoft issue and has to do with how a user is set up in the Windows registry and how that user's file permissions are tagged. So ... although you can not completely rule-out a virus as the cause, this is not the most probable cause.

Anyway ... glad to see it's fixed (for now).

Georg