Drive Mappings

[Guest]

I have an application to convert files to PDF format which will run either as an W2K Service, or as a foreground application. A NET USE command is issued on startup to map two letters to shares on another W2K server (for input & output to the converter). When running as a service, the app refuses to recognize the mapped drives, however it runs fine in the foreground. Wierd thing is, it's the same executable!!!! The vendor is unable to replicate the problem and suspects it has something to do with our network (16K systems in 27 states), but I'm still scratching my head. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Ray at]

Services typically run under the local machine account, which wouldn't have
permissions to the remote share. When you run it as yourself, you are
logged in to the domain and you have access to this share (presumably),
which is why you can connect then. Setup the service to run under an
account that has permissions to the share.

Ray at work

I have an application to convert files to PDF format which will run either

as an W2K Service, or as a foreground application. A NET USE command is
issued on startup to map two letters to shares on another W2K server (for
input & output to the converter). When running as a service, the app
refuses to recognize the mapped drives, however it runs fine in the
foreground. Wierd thing is, it's the same executable!!!! The vendor is
unable to replicate the problem and suspects it has something to do with our
network (16K systems in 27 states), but I'm still scratching my head. Any
ideas would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Guest]

I thought security might be an issue since the machines are in different NT domains, so the NET USE statement in the .CMD file supplies a user I/D and password which is actually a local account on the machine where the I/O directories reside. This is also a different account from what I use to login when running the app in the foreground when the app can see the mapped drives. I will setup the app to use my account as the service account to see what happens. Might be a good idea to replicate the local account (as included in the NET USE statement) on my server, give it rights and use that.

 

[Ray at]

Try piping out your call of net use to a file so you can see what the
response is.

net use q: \\server\share /userthermachine\username
thepassword>c:\file.txt

Ray at work

I thought security might be an issue since the machines are in different

NT domains, so the NET USE statement in the .CMD file supplies a user I/D
and password which is actually a local account on the machine where the I/O
directories reside. This is also a different account from what I use to
login when running the app in the foreground when the app can see the mapped
drives. I will setup the app to use my account as the service account to
see what happens. Might be a good idea to replicate the local account (as
included in the NET USE statement) on my server, give it rights and use
that.