File access denied and You need permissions to perform this action

Windows Access Rights Management
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tstumph
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Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2020 2:27 am

File access denied and You need permissions to perform this action

Post by tstumph »

Sorry for the length of this but wanted to share in case it helps someone else. I read several posts on these and similar issues but hadn't seen one that spelled out the issue and resolution.

Problem: I started to experience the issues of "File Access Denied" and "You need permission to perform this action" on Windows 10 when trying to copy files from 1 folder (and subfolders) to a different folder on the QNAP. The problem was inconsistent, it would copy some folders with no issue, others would fail with one of the above errors. I had upgraded to v4.5.1 a couple of months earlier but this issue had just been reported now. I initially thought that the permissions on the QNAP had been changed by someone.

QNAP Model: TS-453A running QTS v4.5.1
Accounts: Using local QNAP accounts (No AD integration)
Client: Windows 10 (1909) mapped drive to QNAP via "Connect using different credentials" option.

Permissions: From ControlPanel\Privilege\Shared Folders, I reviewed all group/user permissions on the share. Nothing appeared to have changed from what had been set previously. I eventually opened the permissions up so that every user and group (including guest) had read/write permissions to to the share. The problem persisted.

OS upgrade/downgrade: Per recommendation from multiple posts - Upgraded to QTS v4.5.2.1630. The issue persisted. Some posts mentioned that downgrading the OS resolved the issue. I didn't want to do that but was considering it as a last resort.

I came to the conclusion that maybe I had some corrupt data or there was something about the files that QNAP or Windows was blocking. So I started to review the directories that were having the issues. Very quickly I noticed that in all of them they had a .DS_store file in them. I didn't know what that file was (but after a quick google search) I learned that it a file that is created by Mac users when traversing directories via a connected SMB share. (I'm very ignorant about Macs). It is similar to Windows desktop.ini file. The articles I read said it was safe to delete them.

Resolution: I deleted all the .DS_store files and the offending folders now copied as expected.

2 questions remained, "Why did this just start happening?" and "How do I prevent this from happening again?"

For prevention, I did some searching and found that you can run a command on the MACs to configure them to not create the .DS_Store file. That isn't practical to me as I have users coming in and out of my environment all the time. After further researching, I discovered that you can configure the QNAP to delete those files by going to ControlPanel\"Win/Mac/NFS"\Advanced Options\Veto Files. In the "Veto criteria:" box Add:
veto files = /._*/.DS_Store/
delete veto files = yes"

On why this just started: I haven't figured that out yet. I have a theory that the Veto files option defaults have changed (maybe multiple times) between different versions (Either off/on or criteria wise). That's why upgrading or downgrading has helped some and not others depending on what version they are on. Either that or Windows is blocking it for some reason.

Anyway I hope that this helps somebody down the road...
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