We are trying to send files to the Broadcast Agent Server and have the service deposit these files in our specified mapped drive. The letter of the mapped drive is the same on the server and on the client machine. We have only been successful in having the broadcast agent place the file in the “c:” drive. Is there a setting in Broadcast Agent that we need to configure to make this happen? Will Broadcast Agent allow us to write a file to a mapped drive?
Gene,
Personally I have found that using the URL address has been more reliable. This will elimanate any problems with the server not being logged onto. In order for you to have Broadcast Agent use a mapped drive, the server would have to be logged into at all times during any Broadcast Agent reports that are being refreshed to Maped drives.
In a message dated 00-03-17 14:06:10 EST, you write:
We are trying to send files to the Broadcast Agent Server and have the
service deposit these files in our specified mapped drive. The letter of the mapped drive is the same on the server and on the client machine. We have only been successful in having the broadcast agent place the file in the "c:" drive. Is there a setting in Broadcast Agent that we need to configure to make this happen? Will Broadcast Agent allow us to write a file to a mapped drive?
I think this has to do with security under NT, and how the BCA service interacts with the operating system. I don’t believe that it can reference a mapped drive without violating some sort of internal security rule IF it is running as a service.
Under DAS I have seen the same problem, but with DAS you had the option to run as an application rather than as a service. An application falls into a different “security risk”, and apparently can reference mapped drives since the application is actually considered to be “logged in” and therefore valid. A service cannot access mapped drives to avoid a security hole.
Any NT admins out there? I am basing this on observation rather than education…
I have seen UNC notification fail for the same reason. As I mentioned before, I would love to hear from someone in the NT Admin role on this one. But I have tried writing scripts for DAS / BCA that copy / move files to various places. If the script is run interactively, or with DAS running as an application rather than a service, everything works great. As soon as I tried to run DAS as a service the security problem (not being able to write) happened again.
And I think that BCA is only capable of being run as a service.
In a message dated 00-03-18 13:35:32 EST, you write:
What about using the UNC naming convention?
i.e. \servername\sharedfoldername\filename.ext
We are trying to send files to the Broadcast Agent Server and have the
service deposit these files in our specified mapped drive. The letter
of
the mapped drive is the same on the server and on the client machine.
We
have only been successful in having the broadcast agent place the file
in
the "c:" drive. Is there a setting in Broadcast Agent that we need to configure to make this happen? Will Broadcast Agent allow us to write a file to a mapped drive?
I think this has to do with security under NT, and how the BCA service interacts with the operating system. I don’t believe that it can reference
a
mapped drive without violating some sort of internal security rule IF it is running as a service.
Under DAS I have seen the same problem, but with DAS you had the option to run as an application rather than as a service. An application falls into a different “security risk”, and apparently can reference mapped drives since the application is actually considered to be “logged in” and therefore
valid.
A service cannot access mapped drives to avoid a security hole.
If it is of any help, we send files from BCA to other servers without any major problems. As Dave says though, there are security issues. The following is what we do: a) run BCA as a domain (not local system) account that is a member of the ‘Administrators’ group on the server (and the other documented rights granted to it) b) use UNC paths for the target directories c) the account under which the BCA is running MUST have read/write permissions on the target directories.
i.e
BCA runs as domainname\accountname
target server directories have read/write granted to domainname\accountname. no drive mapping is required for this to work and it saves users having to have the same drive mappings as the server and vice-versa.
This won’t work if BCA is running as a local system administrator account because you would not be able to grant the remote server directories the appropriate rights.
Finally, when you say that you are trying to send files to the mapped drives, are these the .rep,.htm.rtf or what?
Regards
Jonathan
Project Leader
Group Medical, Regulatory and Product Strategy IS.
We have been running DAS as a service for the last 18 months with a script that reads a list of server paths (UNC) and copies the current file to those paths.
I have since converted my DAS script to VBA and done some preliminary testing without problems.
You need to make sure that the userid that the DAS/BCA logs in as has proper NT security access to the paths it is trying to copy to. The path must also exist.
Justin T. Katen
314.632.6628
DMCI, a modis company
