Preserving Permission Problem

[Krowten]

Hello,
I have a WD Element USB drive attached to my ReadyNAS Pro. I am backing up one of my NAS shares, called archive, to this USB device. It seems to backup the files fine, but the jobs always fail and I get a log file filled with errors like this:

--
Error encountered copying data from source path ==> /USB_BACKUP1/archive due to unknown reason. Please see log.


cp: preserving permissions for '/USB_BACKUP1/archive/./CD00397/39723_296535.PDF': Operation not supported
cp: preserving ACL for '/USB_BACKUP1/archive/./CD00397/39723_296535.PDF': Operation not supported
cp: preserving permissions for '/USB_BACKUP1/archive/./CD00397/39724_296320.pdf': Operation not supported
cp: preserving ACL for '/USB_BACKUP1/archive/./CD00397/39724_296320.pdf': Operation not supported
cp: preserving permissions for '/USB_BACKUP1/archive/./CD00397/39764_296212.PDF': Operation not supported
cp: preserving ACL for '/USB_BACKUP1/archive/./CD00397/39764_296212.PDF': Operation not supported
cp: preserving permissions for '/USB_BACKUP1/archive/./CD00397': Operation not supported
.
.
.
------


I do NOT have either of the check boxes checked on the backup job screen. I opened a support incident and they cannot duplicate the issue. I am using Windows Domain authentication for ACLs. The USB drive is formatted as USB.

Has anyone else seen this issue? I don't care about preserving rights, I just don't want it to try anymore and I don't want these huge log files created. I also would like to see the job show as completed. I'm running version 4.2.8 of the firmware.

Thanks for any help.

Matt

[Krowten]

*bump*

Anyone have any ideas?

Support has been awful on this one (and I've had good support in the past). I called into support and I got pretty unknowledgable person. They basically just told me that it's not on the USB compatability list, and that is the problem. I simply don't buy that. I know a lot of other folks have these Western Digital Element drives backing up just fine.

All I want is an explanation of what this error is. The support person told me to call in again to get someone else. He was useless.

Is this really what I paid extra for a support contract for? This is pretty amazing.

Thanks.

[Jedi Knight]

Is this drive formatted as FAT32 / EXT3 or NTFS?

It appears to be domain related file/folder permission setting on USB Drive.

[Krowten]

The drive was formatted using NTFS. I enabled SSH and SSHed into the box and went to the USB drive. I then tried to change ownership of the files using chown and chgrp and I actually could NOT. So then I decided to try reformatting the drive as EXT3. After I did that, I ran a backup and low and behold, the permissions and ACLs would change! But I was getting terrible performance, the NTFS was way faster. So next I turned on the USB fast writes and rebooted the ReadyNAS. After that, the backup ran fast.

So, after calling into support twice and getting unacceptable answers (such as insisting it was because the drive was not on the HCL and there was nothing else I could do but buy one on the HCL), I went back to the web-based support and submitted my findings.

Now according to what support is telling me 1) NTFS permissions should be able to be set on the USB drive and 2) EXT3 will perform much slower than NTFS. I perused the forums here and every post I found indicated that EXT3 will outperform NTFS. So I'm not sure who is right there. But as far as I can tell, you can't assign rights or ownership on an NTFS formatted USB drive. I do have another drive, so I will test that one too. EXT3 is fine for backup, it was just nice though to have NTFS for convenience of attaching to a Windows machine and accessing the files. Now I have to use a Linux or Mac host to read the drive or add EXT3 support to a Windows box.

I did submit all my logs and I'm awaiting a response back on the web-based/email support as I'd like to get a final answer as to what should work. But I'm feeling a lot better about my backups now!

[support@cymax.com.au]

Hey Krowten,

I am having the same problem with our NVX with a USB drive attached..

cp: preserving ACL for `/USB_HDD_1/%FILENAME AND PATH%': Operation not supported

We have another backup that is running.. But that does not appear to be backing up anything..

I might give your fix a try.. One problem that I do have is the NAS copies some files, just not alll

[support@cymax.com.au]

Not sure if this is going to help anyone.. I was having the problem as it was backing up from a share to the share on the usb drive.. I have moved the backup localtion:

FROM: [Data]
TO: [USB Device (Rear Top Port)]

[Krowten]

Oh, so just changing it to backup to the USB port took care of the ownership/ACL problem? That's odd.

I guess I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one having the issue.. I was starting to believe I was!

[jrx]

Has this been solved yet?
I'm having the same problem on our 3200 backing up to a NTFS formatted USB drive.
The backup seems to happen fine, however it fails because of this permissions problem.

[Krowten]

I think your best bet is to reformat the drive as EXT3.

Matt

[jrx]

I think your best bet is to reformat the drive as EXT3.

Matt

And why might that be? We paid real money for an enterprise device that should support NTFS.
I'm getting USB write speeds of 25MB/s to an NTFS formatted partition which is great so I can't see the need to use EXT3 from a performance point of view.

The permissions problem combined with the fact that somebody "forgot" to enable GPT partition support in RAIDiator 4.2.9 has really tarnished what would otherwise be a fantastic product....

[Krowten]

I completely agree with you. NTFS was working fine from a performance standpoint for me too. I tried, I really did try to work with support, but it was futile at best. I think I worked with 3 or 4 different techs that picked up my online incident then I called in twice and got two different people (one was so bad I asked for someone else and he told me to just hang up and call back). They all tried to blame something else including:

1) The USB drive is not on the approved list
2) Something is wrong with your domain
3) You used a server name instead of an IP address for the domain
4) You're not on the latest code.

And on and on..

I used to be in tech support for another company and wow these guys were playing the shotgun approach big time.. close the incident at any cost (and they finally closed my incident as well).

Every now and then I did get a guy that really knew his stuff and I tried to indicate that in the surveys. But generally it's been abysmal.

I love the product, great product. We paid for the top level support and I would expect that.