Unable to copy remote .pst files

[richecker]

First of all, this is an incredible product and I use it every day. I only
wish more products were like this one... simple and very effective.

Let me tell you what I am hoping to achieve. I run a network of 20 computers
and each of them has their own user folders and so on that need to be backed
up. I am hoping to just have one batch file that runs on the server that will
go out to all of the c$ admin shares on each computer, and grab the user's
data folders such as documents, pictures as well as the outlook folder.
Everything seems to work great except for copying .pst files remotely. Is this
something that FFS is able to do? Is there a security setting I have to enable
on VSS somewhere that I am missing?

Here is the error message that FFS provides

Synchronization completed with errors!

Start

Info: Processing folder pair:
Left: "\\ib_5001\c$\Users\richecker\Documents\Outlook Files\"
Right: "\\DISKSTATION\home\RichardE\outlook\"
Info: Creating file
"\\DISKSTATION\home\RichardE\outlook\recker@ibrandsinc.com (1).pst"
Error: Error copying locked file
"\\ib_5001\c$\Users\richecker\Documents\Outlook Files\recker@ibrandsinc.com
(1).pst"!
Error accessing Volume Shadow Copy Service!
(Error calling "StartSnapshotSet".
HRESULT: 0x80042316,
Facility: COM/OLE Interface Management,
Win32 Error: Volume: "\\ib_5001\c$\")
Warning: Synchronization completed with errors!

Stop (Total time: 00:06:28)


Here is the event viewer log message:

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error querying for the
IVssWriterCallback interface. hr = 0x80070005, Access is denied.
. This is often caused by incorrect security settings in either the writer or
requestor process.

Operation:
Gathering Writer Data

Context:
Writer Class Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
Writer Name: System Writer
Writer Instance ID: {fb11aa47-911c-493b-910d-8bb21cff6b24}


I have googled both a few times, but still come up empty. Will I be able to
accomplish what I was trying or will I have to load FFS on each machine and
create batch files on each one?

Once again, thank you so much for this product and I will continue telling
everyone I know about it.

[richecker]

OH and I am logged on as a domain admin on the server executing the batch file
and I have ensured that the local user has local admin rights on the remote
machine.

[Zenju]

The error code means:
VSS_E_SNAPSHOT_SET_IN_PROGRESS
The creation of a shadow copy is in progress, and only one shadow copy
creation operation can be in progress at one time. Either wait to try again or
return with a failure error code.

Google finds a couple of hits on this where this problem does *not* go away by
waiting.
http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Windows/microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs/2007-06/msg04207.html
Maybe it helps to refresh VSS registration, see also FreeFileSync helpfile
under "Volume Shadow Copy Service"

PS: don't get confused by the event viewer entries "Unexpected error querying
for the IVssWriterCallback interface". This is not what caused the error, but
a minor problem while waiting for all VSS writers. This happens before the
call to StartSnapshotSet.

[richecker]

Just for clarification, I am running this on a windows server 2008 x64 machine
and the client machine that has the .pst files is running win 7 x64 pro.

I first checked out your help file and ran the command on the server, but
returned with a few errors. For swprv.dll, eventcls.dll, es.dll, vssui.dll I
get "the module was loaded but the call to dllregisterserver failed with error
code 0x80070715." For msxml.dll and msxml4.dll, I get "make sure the binary is
stored at the specified path or debug it to check for problems with the binary
or depenedent .dll The specified module could not be found."

I then took a look at the link you sent me, but that seemed to be more geared
for windows SBS 2003. However, when I look at shadow copies on the server2008
machine, I see next run time is disabled. When I try to get this information
on the win 7 machine, I do not see a tab. I found another article about
enabling tracing on VSS and I ran this on both machines, but no tracefile was
produced....
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/tividd/td/TSMM/SC32-9103-01/en_US/HTML/cli_vss.html

Thanks for your quick response. Any ideas?

[richecker]

And if it makes any difference, the server is running win 2k8 r2 x64.

[richecker]

One more thing... I ran the vssadmin list writers and all of the writers
showed no error, but I am still getting the error after trying these last
couple steps.

[Zenju]

> And if it makes any difference, the server is running win 2k8 r2 x64.
It should not. According to this page
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724834%28VS.85%29.aspx
the Windows Server 2003 version of VSS should also work on Server 2008 R2.

Still, the same page suggests to use Windows SDK for Windows 7 when building
for Server 2008 R2. So let's try this out.
Here is the required DLL for Server 2008 R2 64 bit. Don't worry about it being
named 2003, this just makes sure your FreeFileSync installation will recognize
it. Replace the file located in <freefilesync installation directory>/bin with
this one:
[404, Invalid URL: http://ifile.it/xcvf26j/Shadow_Server2003_x64.dll]

The next version of FreeFileSync will include this new version of the DLL
natively.

[richecker]

Zenju, Thanks for taking the time to help me out on this issue.
Unfortunately, after copying the file, I still get the same error. I first
tried a reboot, and then I tried reregistering the dll, but the dll could not
register because of this error message:

The module "D:\Program FIles\FreeFileSync\BIN\Shadow_Server2003_x64.dll" was
loaded but the entry point dllregisterserver was not found. Make sure that
"filename" is a valid dll or ocx file and then try again.


Any other ideas?

[Zenju]

> According to this page
Sorry, the correct page is:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384627%28VS.85%29.aspx

> I tried reregistering the dll
The Shadow_Server2003_x64.dll is internal to FreeFileSync and doesn't need to
be registered globally. Overwriting the equally named file in the "bin"
subdirectory is sufficient.

> still get the same error
If the VSS_E_SNAPSHOT_SET_IN_PROGRESS error code is not totally bogus, the
solution must be to restart/reinitialize VSS on all relevant machines.
According to
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/windowsserver2008r2general/thread/062cc52c-899b-45f3-8d0c-798b92363f41
a re-registration is not feasible as it was with Server 2003. Google has yet
to unvail the answer to that.

[richecker]

I have restarted the VSS service on both machines, but I am still getting the
error. I also tried running this from a windows xp 32 bit machine copying the
.pst file from the win 7 x64 computer and I get the same exact error. Any
other thoughts?

[Zenju]

You could try to test a simpler case first. Instead of trying to copy a file
locked by some other client on the network, copy a locked file locally. I've
written a small tool that does nothing more than lock a file, so that copying
it will have FFS trigger VSS:
[404, Invalid URL: http://ifile.it/508f1wo/TestLockFile.exe]
If this does not work as well, then it's probably a more general VSS problem
on your local server PC.

[richecker]

Thanks for the utility, that makes it a lot easier to test all of the
different scenarios.

Here is what happens: when I run the ffs on the win 2k 8 machine copying a
locked file from the same machine, it works perfectly. When I run ffs on a win
7 64 pro machine copying a locked file from the same machine, that also works
as expected. Even when I run FFS on a WinXP machine copying a locked file from
the same xp machine, ffs works as expected. However, when I try running ffs on
the win 2k8 machine copying the locked file from the win 7 machine, it fails.
It also fails when trying to run FFS on the win 7 machine copying the locked
file off of the win 2k8 machine. The exact same behavior occurs on my xp
machine since it will copy the locked file that resides on the local machine,
but fails when it tries to access a remotely locked file.

It appears that VSS is having problems grabbing the remote files since it
works as expected on local files. Any other ideas or do you think this is a
Microsoft bug/ missing feature.

[Zenju]

Good news: I have found and fixed the problem with
"VSS_E_SNAPSHOT_SET_IN_PROGRESS". As it turns out there was indeed some
"cleanup code" missing on my part. However I won't take the blame for this.
MS's whole VSS API is one crazy mess!
They made the same mistake in their very own sample code and didn't even
mention the cleanup requirement for the relevant COM method documentation! I
found the required documentation more or less by chance!
You work through all the samples, read all documentation, what more can a
developer do?? Right, it seems he should have telephatic abilities to read
some MS API designer's twisted mind! Okay, feeling a little better after this
rant. Let's go on...

Here is the fixed version:
[404, Invalid URL: http://ifile.it/nb9tuhj/FreeFileSync_v4.2_beta1_setup.exe]

I can't promise VSS over network will work for you, but at least we should get
a reasonable error code. Please restart all your machines before testing, VSS
may still hang pretending it was doing actual work.

In general it seems VSS over network *may* work: I found some mysterious quote
from MS:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa382692%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

Quote: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008,
Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003: Remote file shares are not supported
until Windows Developer Preview and Windows Server Developer Preview.

Whatever that means, but at least it sounds like it's not impossible in first
place.