How to Resolve CIFS-mounted Backup Drive Permissions Errors

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Overview
Resolve the error

Overview

When you attempt to perform a backup to a  Common Internet File System (CIFS)-mounted  drive, you may receive errors that resemble the following example:
/bin/cp: failed to preserve ownership for `': Permission denied /bin/cp: failed to preserve ownership for `': Permission denied
These Permission denied errors may result from missing extended attributes on the CIFS-mounted drive.
More
For more information about CIFS, read our  Backup Configuration  documentation.

Resolve the error

To resolve the permission denied errors for the CIFS-mounted drive, perform the following steps:
    .1Edit the /etc/fstab file so that the CIFS-mounted drive uses the user_xattr option. This will resemble the following example:
/dev/mapper/centos_centos--7--clone-root /                       xfs     defaults        1 1
UUID=01c6e08e-bbd1-4046-af48-beaf233746d4 /boot                   xfs     defaults        1 2
/dev/mapper/centos_centos--7--clone-swap swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
//192.0.2.0/mybackup /backup cifs user,uid=500,rw,suid,credentials=/root/.cifs,user_xattr 0 0
In this example, line 4 displays the CIFS-mounted drive entry.
  • The local user owns the mounted files.
  • The CIFS drive’s access credentials reside in the /root/.cifs file.
ImportantWe strongly recommend that you store your CIFS-mounted drive’s access credentials in a separate, secure file.
    .2Run the remount mount command to remount the CIFS-mounted drive.
    .3Run the lsattr /CIFS_mount command to add the extended attributes.
ImportantThe mount does not support extended attributes if the lsattr /CIFS_mount command returns the following error:
Error means not available: lsattr: Inappropriate ioctl for device While reading flags on ...A mount that does not support extended attributes will not function with cPanel & WHM backups.