Synch from MacOS to NAS using UNC problem

[pinthea]

I just started trying to use FFS on a Mac today, having used it for a long time successfully on Windows. Trying to perform the same action today on my new Mac, the program is not letting me use UNCs to the SMB Shares as the target.

I have several folders on my Mac that I want to back up:
/Users/myname/Documents
/Users/myname/Downloads
/Users/myname/Music
/Users/myname/Movies

I have SMB shares on my NAS for each of these:
\\mynas.local\documents as documents
\\mynas.local\downloads as downloads
\\mynas.local\music as music
\\mynas.local\movies as movies

I can connect to all of these SMB shares on my Mac manually and have had keychain save the login credentials so that every subsequent time the share will mount without prompting me for credentials when I navigate there.

Pretty standard stuff.

So when I naively try setting up a test backup for just one of the shares, for this pair:

From:
/Users/myname/Documents
To:
\\mynas.local\documents

FFS will not allow me to put the UNC in the target value field. The very instant that I type the first backslash, it automatically prepends "/Applications/" to it (minus the quotation marks). This of course is not a valid target and when I complete filling out the target value field it looks like this: /Applications/\\mynas.local\documents, which is invalid. So there seems to be no way for me to put in a UNC in the Mac version of FFS. It doesn't matter if I use an IP address, same thing happens.

The only way is to first mount the SMB share, then drag it over to the target field, where it then fills in "/Volumes/documents". This is troubling because it in no way references the location (name or IP) of my NAS. Regardless, this means that I first have to have the share mounted otherwise it won't be there as a mount point when the FFS job runs. This is not what I want to have happen because I can't guarantee that all of the requisite SMB shares will be mounted and have mount points on the Mac in /Volumes when the job runs to be targets of all of the source folders. I didn't have to do this on the Windows version.

It either seems like a BIG miss on FFS part, or I'm missing something really obvious here.

Using FFS Version 13.9 ARM64 12/07/24 Donation Edition on a Mac Mini M4 running Sequoia 15.2

Please Help! Thanks.

[Plerry]

FFS supports drag/drop of left and/or right base locations.
Try dragging/dropping your SMB location form e.g. Finder to the right-side location in the FFS GUI.
Assuming that works, it should also show you the correct way of entering such locations.

[xCSxXenon]

Blame MacOS
Syntax for SMB UNC paths is "smb://servername/sharename/filename.filetype"

[pinthea]

Xenon, I know how to formulate a valid SMB link. That's not the problem. The problem is that it's not possible to enter an SMB share link, a UNC reference, or anything other than something attached to the local file system (like a previously resolved UNC or SMB that has already been connected up) inside of the FFS source or target fields. You CANNOT start a target value starting with smb or two back slashes or anything else. You MUST pre-attach the resource in MacOS in order to drag/drop or type in a reference to it. To that I put my tongue out and blow raspberries because it's quite limiting.

When attempting to type in a valid SMB share link as you suggested, FFS pre-pends "/Applications" to it, so it comes out like this: /Applications/smb://192.168.1.20/documents for example. That's stoopidly unhelpful. And you can't get rid of it.

[pinthea]

To Pierry, when you drag in an already resolved SMB share, it simply references the mount point in MacOS, such as /Volumes/blahblahblah, which while it works, means that you have to have previously mounted all of your SMB shares, it can't resolve and mount them on the fly. That is a deal breaker for me, I'm jettisoning FFS now that I'm on the Mac and it's decidedly more cumbersome here than it is on Windows. And to think its competitors have figured out how to do this, at least Chronosync has, and I believe that Carbon Copy Cloner has as well. I guess you get what you pay for, even though I've donated to FFS, lol.

[dilligent_fox]

Thanks a lot, that just saved me from a headache to enter the path to the smb-directory of my NAS correctly on Linux :)

FFS supports drag/drop of left and/or right base locations.
Try dragging/dropping your SMB location form e.g. Finder to the right-side location in the FFS GUI.
Assuming that works, it should also show you the correct way of entering such locations.

[pinthea]

Just to be clear, at least on the MacOS version (and probably Linux, too, given how similar their underpinnings are) you can't just go and type in an arbitrary UNC or SMB link, it has to be mounted first and ONLY then you can use its local file system mount point as a target.

I have found this to be an immutable requirement in MacOS version of FFS.

This is NOT how the Windows version works, where you can put in an arbitrary UNC or SMB link and it will resolve it at sync-time. This is also not how other MacOS-compatible backup solutions like Carbon Copy Cloner work, so others have designed their products to work in a dynamic and flexible way. This is how I needed FFS to work, and it does not.

Anyone who continues to recommend "try dragging/dropping your SMB location to the right-side" has either never used the MacOS version of FFS, or has already mounted the SMB share and enjoys seeing their mount point in their local file system filled into the "target" field, because folks, that's all you get.

I'm unsubscribing from this thread and have no reason to log back in here again. Good luck, people!