Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[InflatableMouse]

I've been having some issues on my HTPC with MC locking up, crashing and unable to tag files. I've been really trying to crack these issues but last night frustration levels became intolarable. The problems were so unpredictable, so seemingly random ... Unable to find the cause, I decided today to completely wipe the system drive and reinstall Windows 7 (Ult. 64-bit) to start from scratch.

I've been checking permissions many times before (on the mounted pools, never on the underlying physical drives) and I always noticed unresolved SID's in the list of certain folders. This happens when you have set permissions on a folder (or shared it with), then reinstalled the OS. Even though you recreate the exact same user name, Windows generates a random string (a Security Identifier, or SID) to uniquely identify a user. The string you then see in the permissions box is an old username which can no longer be resolved to an existing user. I typically remove them or when I'm lazy I ignore them, I check/correct the permissions I need and move on.

After todays reinstall I hadn't had Drive Bender installed yet and I was asked to give permissions copying something (UAC popup). I thought it was weird but didn't think much of it until after I had installed Drive Bender again and didn't receive that popup on the same folder. Then I realized something and asked myself, how does Drive Bender deal with permissions when it needs to spread files across several physical disks? What permissions does it show when I check the security of a folder on a mounted pool? I compared the mounted permissions with the permissions on the individual drives; they did not match! I checked a couple of previously shared folders and basically, it was a mess, it wasn't just permissions not matching, the owner of some folders were set to SYSTEM while others were not.

What I ended up doing (and what I don't recommend you do if you don't fully realize what it does) was to stop Drive bender (dismounting the pools) and opening properties on the root of each drive and setting the Owner back to Administrators group recursively. Closed the properties box, reopened it and on the security tab, opened Advanced. Removed any unresolved SID's and made sure the proper permissions were assigned to Administrators, SYSTEM, Authenticated Users and Users groups. I checked replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object (which is the root of the drive) and chose OK. This replaced ALL permissions on ALL folders with that list of permissions on the root. I repeated this on all drives, restarted Drive Bender and checked the permissions on the mounted pooled drives. Everything matches up again (pfew!).

I don't have MC installed yet so I don't know if my previous issues are fixed but at least I now have a solid basis again for troubleshooting if I run into problems.

If you use Drive Bender and you have reinstalled Windows and never checked the permissions on the pooled drives (check shared folders!) before, I strongly suggest you do. Check them against the permissions set on the physical drives.

This leaves me with the question how DB deals with permissions. Which permissions does it show when physical pooled drives have different underlying permissions ...  ?

[jmone]

WOW - thanks for the time to write it up, I've never had such issues - did you post over at DB?

[InflatableMouse]

No, not yet. Their forums are void of any developers the only way to report to them is to log a support ticket. I no longer need support and by correcting it I have no proof to hand over either.

I have no idea how it happened. The SID's are one thing, but permissions not matching between pooled drives is another thing entirely. Each time I create a share or change permissions I'm checking the underlying permissions on the physical drives, so far it's working as it should.

It could be there was a bug in one of the earlier versions and they've corrected it since. I haven't checked their release notes for this specifically.

[jmone]

In looking at alternatives to SynToy one of them had an option to copy the permissions as well as the file that got me thinking.  The files in my pools have all been moved around by multiple tools (SyncToy, Explorer, DB, etc) between pools (back and forward), mounted on different HW Configs and from different (and sometime recreated) User Accounts at various times.  In retrospect, I'm not that surprised that some of the permissions are not SID's as these account on these PC no longer exist.  It may also be complicated by the fact I noticed the WHS Console when applying Read/Write to a user account actually applies a Custom permission.

At least I now know the fix and it is easy and quick to apply if it happens again.

[jmone]

New version of BD is out but this caught my eye:


Release v1.4.2.5 rc2 (2012-12-05)
- Bug fix: During a pool initialization or pool restore, Drive Bender can hang on Windows 8, Server 2012.
- Bug fix: On Windows 8 / Server 2012 (can also apply to older O/S's), Windows can throw recycle bin corrupt error messages (cause by permissions issues).
- Update: When creating a drive letter mount point, the default "drive" permissions are now set to "Everyone". This is to prevent some users experiencing the message "You need permission to perform this action".
- Update: Some interface additions and tweaks.

[InflatableMouse]

Yeh I saw that one as well, made me chuckle.

[raldo]

Thanks for the info, guys!

I've been trying to get my system up and running for weeks now, seeing these kinds of issues. I've had a support ticket in for 3 days without a proper response on exactly this issue.

I'm seriosusly starting to wonder if I should buy some kind of NAS.

What I ended up doing (and what I don't recommend you do if you don't fully realize what it does) was to stop Drive bender (dismounting the pools) and opening properties on the root of each drive and setting the Owner back to Administrators group recursively. Closed the properties box, reopened it and on the security tab, opened Advanced. Removed any unresolved SID's and made sure the proper permissions were assigned to Administrators, SYSTEM, Authenticated Users and Users groups. I checked replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object (which is the root of the drive) and chose OK. This replaced ALL permissions on ALL folders with that list of permissions on the root. I repeated this on all drives, restarted Drive Bender and checked the permissions on the mounted pooled drives. Everything matches up again (pfew!).

o By saying "Stop Drive Bender" you mean Stopping the service?
o By saying "setting the Owner back to Administrators group recursively" you mean you're using explorer to do this? I was of the belief that explorer does not have elevated rights? (I.e. use an elevated prompt and then a "takeown" command with recursive options?)

I have no idea how it happened.

I copied some folders from an older WHSv1 disk and, poof, issues like these.

[jmone]

I just did it from explorer but was logged into my whs box as an administrator.  Im away frommy setup for a couple of days else would post the screen shots.

[jmone]

Here was the info from another thread. 

- Permissions:  Once it was all up and running I used SyncToy from my "Main" PC pool to the new WHS Pool to replace the files I had trashed on DB Disk 1.  All seemed OK, but when I ran Sync Toy there was aways more to sync and it would throw some funny errors.  After closer inspection it was always the same files and while I could see them on my WHS box I could not see them from my Main PC mapping of the pool.  Now ... I had used tried setting permissions using both WHS Dashboard as well as via Remote Desktop but it seemed to have stalled on a couple of attempts so I rebooted.  The end result a bunch of these files were not inheriting their permissions but were specific to accounts using SID's (if I have that term correct).  A bit more googling and I found the great options to "replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions form this object" and within a couple of minutes it was solved.

[InflatableMouse]

o By saying "Stop Drive Bender" you mean Stopping the service?

Yes.

o By saying "setting the Owner back to Administrators group recursively" you mean you're using explorer to do this? I was of the belief that explorer does not have elevated rights? (I.e. use an elevated prompt and then a "takeown" command with recursive options?)

Then start explorer with elevated permissions to do so (right click, run as administrator). Honestly I have no idea about this, first thing I do is disable UAC.