UrBackup unable to back up to WD My Cloud EX2100 NAS (SOLVED)

Server
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6/4/2019 Update: Solution Summary
Problem occurred while trying to save backups from a Windows 10 UrBackup Server to a *nix backup target. SMB and NFS were unusable because of deficiencies in their emulations used to talk across operating systems, primarily soft and hard links. A Windows iSCI initiator was created and mapped to a Windows drive to connect to iSCSI backup target. When specifying a mapped backup drive in UrBackup, do not specify a trailing backslash.

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Hi, been playing with urBackup for a few weeks and am impressed with its features and capabilities. I’m attempting to set up a small (~10 client) backup server at my church and am running into connection(?) issues.

The plan is to create a shared folder on the NAS that will be the base for a shared folder on each Windows client and in turn mapped to the client’s drive letter, e.g. NAS01 is detected by the client as a “storage device” which in turn is mapped to a client’s drive letter B:. The backup server will be Windows or Linux, depending on what’s easiest.

During practice, was able to successfully create backups on a client pc to the client pc e.g. from C:\ to a directory on D:\ and successfully restore. Now when attempting to use my NAS share, I receive messages aplenty in the log stating:

…
2019-05-30 10:39:21: msg=UPDATE SETTINGS
2019-05-30 10:39:21: msg=UPDATE SETTINGS
2019-05-30 10:39:21: msg=UPDATE SETTINGS
2019-05-30 10:39:21: Getting client settings…
2019-05-30 10:39:21: Getting client settings…
2019-05-30 10:39:21: Getting client settings…
2019-05-30 10:39:21: Flushing FileClient…
2019-05-30 10:39:21: Flushing FileClient…
===> 2019-05-30 10:39:21: Testing if backup destination can handle subvolumes and snapshots…
2019-05-30 10:39:21: Flushing FileClient…
===> 2019-05-30 10:39:21: Backup destination cannot handle subvolumes and snapshots. Snapshots disabled.
===> 2019-05-30 10:39:21: Testing if backup destination can handle filesystem transactions…
===> 2019-05-30 10:39:21: Testing for hardlinks in backup destination…
===> 2019-05-30 10:39:21: Could not create hardlink at backup destination. ===> Hardlinks disabled. The specified server cannot perform the requested operation. (code: 58)
===> 2019-05-30 10:39:21: Testing for reflinks in backup destination…
===> 2019-05-30 10:39:21: Could not create reflink at backup destination. Reflinks disabled. The specified server cannot perform the requested operation. (code: 58)
019-05-30 10:39:57: Settings changed. Capabilities may have changed. Reconnecting channel…
2019-05-30 10:40:01: Settings changed. Capabilities may have changed. Reconnecting channel…
2019-05-30 10:40:20: Settings changed. Capabilities may have changed. Reconnecting channel…
…

  • I’m using urBackup version 2.3.8 on Windows 10 Pro, Version 1809
  • The NAS is a WD My Cloud Ex2100 Firmware version 2.31.183. I think the base operating system is Linux using LVM for raid.
  • The NAS share is named Backups and is mapped to drive B: as \\NAS01\Backups. I created a sub directory urBackup under B:.
  • The urBackup server storage path is \NAS01\Backups\urBackup. When attempting to save this value, the settings page in the browser just spins and spins and spins…

There seems to be no way around this. Does this mean the EX2100 is unsuitable for this situation? I’m assuming that urBackup is doing its magic with Samba underneath the covers and haven’t touched any protocol settings on the NAS. I’ve also got a Synology DS418 on order for my personal network at home. Has anyone worked with a Synology NAS before? Will be it be compatible with urBackup or should I stop shipment?

2

It usually doesn’t work (completely) with Linux samba. Perhaps you could use iSCSI instead (if your NAS supports it…)?

3

Thanks for the quick answer.

The NAS may support iSCSI I’m not sure I can! I was going to have a go at creating some NFS shares and retrofit W10 to use NFS. I hear that NFS and windows can be a pain but right now I’ve got one (maybe two) boat anchors if I can’t get the client and server to talk. Plus I know next to nothing about iSCSI.

Will let you know what happens.

4

uroni,

My experiment with NFS has crashed and burnt. It all seems to boil down to the inability of the backup target to create hardlinks and symlinks. No more NFS or SMB for me! I’m in the middle of trying to set up iscsi.

Have successfully mapped my NAS to drive Z on the client (no CHAP specified yet) and created a dummy folder (urBackup) from the client just to prove to myself that it could be done. UrBackup doesn’t share my confidence though. The top of the status page displays:

image
image1285×126 14.5 KB

My backup location is set image

A snippet of windows explorer looks like this:

image

My confusion is whether the complaint is permissions based or formatting based. If it’s permissions based, is this client permissions or server permissions or both? Whom do I specify for additional permissions?

If it’s a formatting issue, what’s the correct format? While attempting to use SMB, I found that the backup location required UNC notation. UrBackup didn’t like the bare-naked Z that windows offered up and I needed to specify the actual server ip and path on the server. If it’s a formatting foobar, there’s no UNC notation for iscsi that I’m aware of.

This was supposed to be a “quick fix” but if this can’t be resolved, may as well just go ahead and build my own FreeNAS as I intended.

Thanks for your time.

Paul

5

It should do it automatically, but remove the last \, please.

6

I’d suggest accessing via UNC path rather than as a mapped drive, If you really want to access as a mapped drive I’d suggest having a look at this page:

https://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50208.aspx

While it is for different software, the underlying permissions issue is the same and still occurs if your NAS is Windows based.

7

Thank you for responding.

As uroni suggested, I removed the trailing backslash and instant success! Error-free backups ensued! I’m in the middle of backing up dummy files to practice restoring.

Thanks to all for seeing me through this.

Paul