Authentication Error

poorgradstudent

I used Knox to make some vaults for old folders that I wanted to file away because I did not need constant access to them. I made the vaults on my laptop, then dragged them to our company's server and stored them there in my server folder. I went to open one of these vaults on the server today and it consistently says "authentication error" and will not open it. The password I type in is correct, because other vaults that are on my laptop's hard drive are correctly opened. I've found out that all the vaults that I placed on the server all give me the authentication error when entering the password. I know the password is correct, and there is basically very little to zero chance that I mistyped the password on all the vaults that i've moved to the server.



Any tips on what may have happened and suggestions to open these vaults?



Thank you.

khad

It sounds like the backup files may be corrupt.



Do you know what type of file system the server is using? Is it a local file share? Mac? Windows?



Is it a remote server? [S]FTP? HTTP? iDisk?



Have you copied the files to your hard drive before attempting to open them? They will not mount remotely.



Please let me know. I would love to help if I can.

poorgradstudent

[quote name='khad' timestamp='1296960861' post='20125']

It sounds like the backup files may be corrupt.



Do you know what type of file system the server is using? Is it a local file share? Mac? Windows?



Is it a remote server? [S]FTP? HTTP? iDisk?



Have you copied the files to your hard drive before attempting to open them? They will not mount remotely.

[/quote]



I'm not super knowledgeable on this front, but I will point out that our institution doesn't *officially* support Macs, so it's bound to be a format that is more Windows friendly.



It is a local server that I access when at work using an smb:// address. I can't access it remotely unless I VPN in. However, as I noted before, I discovered the problem while at work.



I did copy the vault to my laptop and then tried to open it... no dice.



I hope this information is what you were looking for. I'm happy to provide what other info is necessary.



Thank you.

khad

That is exactly the information I was looking for. Thank you.



There are some [url="http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10136288#10136288"]possible issues with SMB files shares and sparse bundles[/url] (the default vault type in Knox). Sparse images seem to not be affected. This is due to the nature of the vaults.



A bundle is actually a special folder. In OS X it shows up as a single file, but on a Windows machine it will appear as a folder. It is possible that either (1) the copy to the network share was not done properly (i.e., there was an error) or (2) the copy was successful but storing a sparse bundle on a non-HFS (i.e., non-Mac) file system can lead to problems.



The issue does not arise all the time, so there will undoubtedly be folks who claim to do this and never have a problem. I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you, but I would recommend keeping all your vaults on Mac-formatted volumes.



You could also use sparse images rather than sparse bundles by selecting "10.4 and later" compatibility when creating vaults in Knox.

MartyS

[quote name='poorgradstudent' timestamp='1296964338' post='20128']

I did copy the vault to my laptop and then tried to open it... no dice.

[/quote]



I just copied "just a test.sparsebundle" (a Knox-created vault) from my Mac running Snow Leopard to a Windows-XP pc using the SMB:// protocol. I then copied it back from that pc to my Mac's Desktop and double-clicked it to mount it. It worked perfectly. At no time did I try and actually mount it across the network and I wouldn't be surprised if this wouldn't have some problems... particularly if I updated the contents. The SMB protocol doesn't handle the same services as does HFS+ and if OS X has any hiccup here (as the link Khad gave shows they do) then the data could be corrupted easily.



Be sure that before you copy it from the Mac that it is dismounted first to ensure 100% vault integrity. If you didn't do this in the first place then whatever got stored on your network storage is probably of no use any longer, even without being mounted later.



Knox for Mac is built on the vault technology OS X provides and if there are any failures at that level of support then there will be the same issues with a Knox vault.