Status window indicates server connected but no backups are made

client
1

My situation is this: I’ve got computer O at location 1 backing up to computer D at location 2 (over the Internet). Computer D backs up to O as does computers R and M, also at location 2, and laptop B which travels with me but currently spends most the time at location 2. This all worked fine for a couple of months up until two weeks ago. Now the computers backing up to O are struggling. One thing that happened around that time is that I replaced my router at 2, however the computers having problem are the ones backing up to O (at 1) so that (e.g. lack of port forwards) shouldn’t be relevant. The router at 1 was replaced a couple of weeks before that but backups continued after that. I also updated the server at A to 2.2.11 recently but didn’t change any settings. I don’t remember exactly when I did that, but it’s uninstall.exe has modified date as a week ago whereas a couple of .db files were last modified two weeks ago (i.e. about when this started).

It’s not consistent though. I restarted computer O today and after that R (maybe after restarting it’s urbackup service) made a backup and D seemed to start a backup after being restarted but failed to finish it (but it’s indicated as “last seen” at that time on the server admin pages at A). This and the fact that it worked before should rule out any port forward or password issues, right?

All computers indicate being connected in the client status dialog but for D and B the system tray icon is red and if I try “Restore components” I get an error saying it’s not connected to a server (maybe it should?, I’ve never activated component backups). In the log there are lines “Error receiving challenge packet” followed by “InternetClient: Had an auth error”.

Could this be due to the urbackup server update at A? Or something with the new router at B being a bottleneck? Location 2 has a crappy ADSL connection with somewhat limited upstream capacity, though it’s still good enough that I can RDP to computer D from the internet (using VPN to the new router at 1) so it shouldn’t be a problem. Computer R runs Win8 or 10, the rest are Win7.

Log from B:

2018-07-13 21:56:10: Loaded -fileserv- plugin
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Loaded -fsimageplugin- plugin
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Loaded -cryptoplugin- plugin
2018-07-13 21:56:10: SQLite: recovered 13920 frames from WAL file C:\Program Files\UrBackup\urbackup\backup_client.db-wal code: 283
2018-07-13 21:56:10: urbackupserver: Server started up successfully!
2018-07-13 21:56:10: FileSrv: Backup privileges set successfully
2018-07-13 21:56:10: FileSrv: Backup privileges set successfully (SE_SECURITY_NAME)
2018-07-13 21:56:10: FileSrv: Backup privileges set successfully (SE_RESTORE_NAME)
2018-07-13 21:56:10: FileSrv: Server started up successfully
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Started UrBackupClient Backend...
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Filesystem. Vol="\\?\Volume{0f653f84-5f2c-4cc4-b42a-fd592367050c}\" Name="" Type="ntfs" VPaths=1 Size=455042134016
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Filesystem is System partition. Skipping...
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Filesystem. Vol="\\?\Volume{f64c0e3b-0706-433a-1c67-21ab1b1dbd4f}\" Name="recovery" Type="ntfs" VPaths=0 Size=24380436480
2018-07-13 21:56:10: GPT formated hard disk encountered. No bootable flag. Attributes = 0
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Bootable flag not set for volume
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Found potential candidate: \\?\Volume{f64c0e3b-0706-433a-1c67-21ab1b1dbd4f}\ Score: 1
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Filesystem. Vol="\\?\Volume{b0378c48-fc5c-11e6-a111-806e6f6e6963}\" Name="" Type="" VPaths=1 Size=-1
2018-07-13 21:56:10: GetVolumeInformation failed with error code 21. Skipping...
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Selected volume \\?\Volume{f64c0e3b-0706-433a-1c67-21ab1b1dbd4f}
2018-07-13 21:56:10: System dir: C:\Windows
2018-07-13 21:56:10: Volpath: \\.\C:
2018-07-13 21:56:10: EFI partition with type UUID {F4019732-066E-4E12-8273-346C5641494F}
2018-07-13 21:56:10: EFI partition with type UUID {DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC}
2018-07-13 21:56:10: EFI partition with type UUID {C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B}
2018-07-13 21:56:10: EFI System Partition is at \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\Harddisk0\Partition3
2018-07-13 21:56:10: urbackupserver: No available slots... starting new Worker
2018-07-13 21:56:10: ClientService cmd: STATUS DETAIL#pw=OjqcwHVf8IMkL1bncsXogSAsSVxNZK
2018-07-13 21:56:10: ClientService cmd: STATUS#pw=OjqcwHVf8IMkL1bncsXogSAsSVxNZK
2018-07-13 21:56:10: ClientService cmd: STATUS DETAIL#pw=OjqcwHVf8IMkL1bncsXogSAsSVxNZK
2018-07-13 21:56:11: ClientService cmd: STATUS#pw=OjqcwHVf8IMkL1bncsXogSAsSVxNZK
2018-07-13 21:56:11: Looking for old Sessions... 0 sessions
2018-07-13 21:56:11: Final path: C:\Users\mkm
2018-07-13 21:56:11: ClientService cmd: STATUS DETAIL#pw=OjqcwHVf8IMkL1bncsXogSAsSVxNZK
2018-07-13 21:56:12: Trying to connect to internet server "xxx.mooo.com" at port 55415
2018-07-13 21:56:12: ClientService cmd: STATUS DETAIL#pw=OjqcwHVf8IMkL1bncsXogSAsSVxNZK
2018-07-13 21:56:12: Successfully connected.
2018-07-13 21:56:12: Error receiving challenge packet
2018-07-13 21:56:12: InternetClient: Had an auth error
2018-07-13 21:56:12: Error receiving challenge packet
2018-07-13 21:56:12: InternetClient: Had an auth error
2018-07-13 21:56:13: ClientService cmd: STATUS DETAIL#pw=OjqcwHVf8IMkL1bncsXogSAsSVxNZK

... After this it continues with mostly

ClientService cmd: STATUS DETAIL#pw=OjqcwHVf8IMkL1bncsXogSAsSVxNZK

and occasionally one of 

ClientService cmd: STATUS#pw=OjqcwHVf8IMkL1bncsXogSAsSVxNZK
Client timeout in ClientConnector::Run
Error receiving challenge packet / InternetClient: Had an auth error

How can I further troubleshoot this?

2

Sounds like the client in UrBackup has non-matching credentials with the Urbackup Client. Check your ID and the Internet password for the account.

3

Sounds like the client in UrBackup has non-matching credentials with the Urbackup Client.

But it worked earlier (and still partially does for computer R that managed to do an incremental backup though it “Completed with issues”) and I haven’t changed any settings since. Wouldn’t that excelude password issues?

Does the server update change anything related to server_idents.txt etc.? (But then again, computer R managed to connect and do some work yesterday).

Check your ID and the Internet password for the account.

There is only a password in my settings (in the GUI), where do I find the id you’re referring to? I guess that would be the key from when the client data is created on the server? I used the option to create a customized installer and haven’t changed anything related to that afterwards (and it all worked a couple of weeks ago).

I realize now that I’ve still got the old router so I’ll try to put that back tonight and see if that’s what broke it.

Can the server update be undone to see if that was the cause?

4

Should but double check

2018-07-18%2008_42_13-Window
2018-07-18%2008_42_13-Window747×232 7.3 KB

server update undo, not sure about that. Can uninstall, reinstall from database backup pre-update.

5

I know this may sounds odd… but check your MTU and other adjustments in your router. If you are fragmenting and not making adjustments for it, or if your MTU is too high for some part of your communication chain (your ISP router for example), then you may be getting discarded fragments.
If you have replaced your router with a consumer grade router, you may have trouble finding the settings… if it is business class, you may still have to go exploring to try to locate the “network” settings, but they should be in there.
I had an issue when I moved from a consumer grade (which worked fine) to a business class router. Fortunately, I was able to make the tuning adjustments on that router, so it’s was all good.
Good luck.

6

None of the clients have the separate settings box checked. I’ve only checked the password for computer D which I’m at now but what happened soon after I posted here is that computer O rebooted due to a power outage after which all the others have performed backups (though one of them keeps getting “Completed with issues”) so I really don’t think that’s it. The reboot of O may be irrelevant too as I had rebooted it a day or two before while trying to troubleshoot this without it helping.

I guess I could just be happy that it suddenly started working but it feels brittle so I’d like to eventually get to the bottom of it anyway.

7

The previous router was a really old Netgear (probably WGR614), the new one isn’t that new either (TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND, nowhere near the latest version) but it runs OpenWRT/LEDE which I suppose makes it semi-professional. It does have a “Override MTU” setting (the text box shows 1500 in greyed text) but I’m kind of reluctant to play around with that stuff before reading up considerably as it was 20+ years since I studied networking at that level. But your suggestion is that I lower it?

The internet connection at the site with computers D, M and R is indeed crap (ADSL with low upstream speed) and will remain so as the only fiber internet provider we’ve got that operates in such rural areas has managed to piss the local farmers off to a point where negotiations have been stalled for more than a year.