What does this warning mean? "Filename "C:" contains ':' which the operating system does not allow in paths"

I keep seeing a few warning like this when doing file backups on my wife’s Windows laptop. It makes no sense to me because the OS does allow “:” characters in a file’s path name and I didn’t explictly specify any path that contains it anyway. Here’s a typical log that I’m seeing:

2022-12-28 11:34:46(info): Starting scheduled incremental file backup…
2022-12-28 11:50:43(info): Scanning for changed hard links on volume of “C:”…
2022-12-28 11:50:43(info): Following symbolic link at “C:\Users\All Users” to “C:\ProgramData” confirms symlink backup target “.symlink_ProgramData” to “C:\ProgramData”
2022-12-28 11:50:43(info): Indexing of “Users” done. 14753 filesystem lookups 0 db lookups and 0 db updates
2022-12-28 11:50:43(info): Mistys-Laptop: Loading file list…
2022-12-28 11:50:49(info): Mistys-Laptop: Calculating file tree differences…
2022-12-28 11:50:50(info): Mistys-Laptop: Calculating tree difference size…
2022-12-28 11:50:50(info): Mistys-Laptop: Linking unchanged and loading new files…
2022-12-28 11:51:10(warning): Filename “C:” contains ‘:’ which the operating system does not allow in paths. Replacing ‘:’ with ‘’ and appending hash.
2022-12-28 11:52:36(warning): Filename “C:” contains ‘:’ which the operating system does not allow in paths. Replacing ‘:’ with '
’ and appending hash.
2022-12-28 11:55:30(info): Waiting for file transfers…
2022-12-28 11:56:24(info): Waiting for file hashing and copying threads…
2022-12-28 11:56:25(info): Writing new file list…
2022-12-28 11:56:31(info): All metadata was present
2022-12-28 11:56:34(info): Transferred 701.834 MB - Average speed: 17.3072 MBit/s
2022-12-28 11:56:37(info): Time taken for backing up client Mistys-Laptop: 21m 50s
2022-12-28 11:56:37(info): Backup succeeded

Both the incremental file and image backups report “OK” in the server’s status display, but I’d still like to get rid of these warning messages if possible. Any idea what’s going on to cause them?

Thanks!

Hmmm… I’m also seeing this on my Linux boxes as well, like this:

2022-12-28 10:50:18(warning): Filename “computer:” contains ‘:’ which the operating system does not allow in paths. Replacing ‘:’ with ‘’ and appending hash.
2022-12-28 10:50:18(warning): Filename “computer:-508dec4c.log” contains ‘:’ which the operating system does not allow in paths. Replacing ‘:’ with '
’ and appending hash.
2022-12-28 10:50:18(warning): Filename “network:” contains ‘:’ which the operating system does not allow in paths. Replacing ‘:’ with ‘’ and appending hash.
2022-12-28 10:50:18(warning): Filename “network:-585fd3ee.log” contains ‘:’ which the operating system does not allow in paths. Replacing ‘:’ with '
’ and appending hash.
2022-12-28 10:50:18(warning): Filename “127.0.1.1:+10693” contains ‘:’ which the operating system does not allow in paths. Replacing ‘:’ with ‘_’ and appending hash.

Again, nothing is specified in the settings for these clients that explicitly contains a “:” character at all.

Are you applying windows path exclusions to macs/linux machines?

Thanks for your reply!

I’m overriding the server’s default “Windows” settings (that include a default directory ("/users") and some exclusions ("\Temp*;\Games*;*\OneDrive*")) for each of the individual Linux machines (which all just have a default directory of “/home”).

None of the default or overridden parameters contain any “:” characters at all - so I’m not sure where they are coming from to generate the various warning messages. I’m also not sure why the messages from the Windows system says that it’s “not allowed” when it obviously is within a fully specified file/path name?

Within the image backup settings tab the “volumes to backup” parameter is specified as “ALL” for all environments, even though image backups are disabled on all the Linux systems - since I could never get the snapshot mechanism to work there at all.

Anyone else seeing warnings like this showing up at all?

Have a safe and happy New Year!

On Windows you cannot have file names with e.g. : in it. That’s why the server is replacing them and logging the warnings.

Thanks for your post!

I guess I’m confused about what the precise definition of a “file name” is here. A “fully specified file name” would include the complete path as its prefix (that would contain a single “:” character on Windows, when the disk drive letter is specified). Given that no “:” characters were defined anywhere in the client’s parameters, I still don’t understand exactly where the client is seeing or getting them from?

The ultimate question is, how can I change the client parameters to make these warnings stop appearing?

Thanks again for your post, have a great New Year!