Error when trying to import from shared drive.

[Slag-O-Matic]

My LaunchBox machine is a Late 2012 Mac mini (Core i7 @ 2.7GHz, 16GB, 256GB SSD boot drive, 4TB SSD LaunchBox drive) running Windows 10 Pro, fully updated. LaunchBox is at version 13.8.

I have a home server based off a 2020 Mac mini (Apple M1, 8GB, 256GB SSD, 64GB Thunderbolt RAID5 (8x8TB, 56TB useful)) running macOS 12 (Monterey), fully updated.

My LaunchBox machine has the RAID mapped as the Z drive using administrator credentials. I can access it from File Explorer or anywhere else without incident.

I go into LaunchBox, TOOLS -> IMPORT -> ROM Files. Click NEXT, Add Folder, select a folder from the Z drive, NEXT, select the platform, NEXT, select an emulator, NEXT, select "Copy the files into my LaunchBox games folder" (where it correctly identifies the location), NEXT, NEXT, wait a few seconds to retrieve the info from EmuMovies, NEXT, NEXT, and NEXT again. At this point it should start copying the files into my LaunchBox folder but it does not. I get an error:

Quote

 

Could not parse files from the following folder: Z:\Retro Gaming\ROMs

Please make sure you have proper permissions to read the specified folder and that the folder path is valid. This also could be a sign of hard drive or file system failure. LaunchBox cannot continue.

Invalid Signature. : 'Z:\Retro Gaming\ROMs

 

Clicking OK ends LaunchBox with nothing imported.

Things I've tried:

• Making sure everything was properly updated.
• Running DISM and sfc on the LaunchBox machine (all clean).
• No malware found.
• Changing the location of the LaunchBox folder.
• Starting fresh with a clean installation of LaunchBox.
• Changing the location of the ROMs folder on my server to root level.
• Selecting just a single file rather than a folder.

None of these have worked. The only workaround I've found is to copy the files twice: Manually copy the folder from my server to my LaunchBox machine, then run through the import process again but pointing to the local copy of the folder. This works 100% of the time.

Why can't I import ROMs directly from my server?

[Slag-O-Matic]

I should also add that this is not a new issue. I've been running LaunchBox for about a year and a half and this has always been an issue.

[Slag-O-Matic]

Nobody? Nothing?

[skizzosjt]

Hi @Slag-O-Matic I sometimes have stuff running from a networked location and never had an issue with that. With the exception of the long standing bug of any external or networked disk.....if you do not have said disk connected when you try to edit a platform that has that directory listed as a path for say game location.....LaunchBox has a fit and crashes because it cannot find that directory.

But either way, I gave this a shot myself since I've only had files on network locations, but I don't think I ever imported from those locations. I tried it a few ways. Drag and drop, import files, import folders. Did it from the share directly like \\DESKTOP-B760\Media as well as where I mapped it "locally" on the other system as the M: drive so M:\Media and everything worked each time. I am still on v13.6 for what that is worth but if you say it's been happening for a while I'd have to assume it's not a specific version kinda issue.

[faeran]

I've been running ROMs from a network location for about 5 years and haven't run run into the issues you've talked about.

It does read more like some kind of permissions mismatch. Like the user you used to open LaunchBox doesn't have the necessary read/write permissions to those files on the network drive.

[C-Beats]

@skizzosjt @faeran Neither of you are operating the drive on a Mac though correct? I believe the thing that may be causing issues are the hidden files Mac computers put in the directory (don't recall the exact file name). @Slag-O-Matic if you drag/drop the rom files from the folder to LaunchBox from the drive location do you still get the error? If not I'd assume it's that file causing issues.

[skizzosjt]

2 hours ago, C-Beats said:

@skizzosjt @faeran Neither of you are operating the drive on a Mac though correct?

That's correct, the two systems I use for LB/BB networking are running Windows 10 and 11.

 

Though I do have Macs and a Hacintosh running macOS and/or Windows, so have some limited experience here. At one point I had a disk formatted as exFAT so I could physically connect it to either system and both macOS and Windows can read and write to said disk. When I first brought it back to Windows I see a boatload of hidden files that all have their file name precede with ._ (decimal point/period followed by underscore).  Are these the files you refer to as a potential cause of the issue? 

[C-Beats]

1 hour ago, skizzosjt said:

That's correct, the two systems I use for LB/BB networking are running Windows 10 and 11.

Though I do have Macs and a Hacintosh running macOS and/or Windows, so have some limited experience here. At one point I had a disk formatted as exFAT so I could physically connect it to either system and both macOS and Windows can read and write to said disk. When I first brought it back to Windows I see a boatload of hidden files that all have their file name precede with ._ (decimal point/period followed by underscore).  Are these the files you refer to as a potential cause of the issue? 

Yeah, those are the files I'm referring to.

[Slag-O-Matic]

10 hours ago, faeran said:

It does read more like some kind of permissions mismatch. Like the user you used to open LaunchBox doesn't have the necessary read/write permissions to those files on the network drive.

The username I'm using on my LaunchBox machine is not the same username I'm logging into my server with, that's true. But, why should that make a difference if I have the drive mapped using the proper credentials? I'm already successfully logged into the server so why would LaunchBox specifically make a request to connect using different credentials?

[Slag-O-Matic]

10 hours ago, C-Beats said:

@skizzosjt @faeran Neither of you are operating the drive on a Mac though correct? I believe the thing that may be causing issues are the hidden files Mac computers put in the directory (don't recall the exact file @Slag-O-Matic if you drag/drop the rom files from the folder to LaunchBox from the drive location do you still get the error? If not I'd assume it's that file causing issues.

I haven't tried that but I will. However, I don't think it's the Mac's invisible files (.DS_Store, among others) because when I copy ROM folders from my server to my LaunchBox machine those invisible files are copied over with it. When I subsequently import the ROMs into LaunchBox the file listing comes up and LaunchBox does see those files but (of course) doesn't do anything with them. So if the problem was around those Mac-specific files then it should also error out when I copy those files to my local LaunchBox drive and import from there.

[faeran]

15 minutes ago, Slag-O-Matic said:

The username I'm using on my LaunchBox machine is not the same username I'm logging into my server with, that's true. But, why should that make a difference if I have the drive mapped using the proper credentials? I'm already successfully logged into the server so why would LaunchBox specifically make a request to connect using different credentials?

LaunchBox doesn't make any file requests, it's Windows that does. I'm not really sure that this is your specific issue, but imagine this scenario:

You are logged into Windows with User1. Within a file explorer you authenticate to your network drive using User2 who is the only account that has permission to access those files. You open LaunchBox and you drag and drop files from your network drive into LaunchBox. LaunchBox tries to gain access to those files based on User1's permission access (since that is the user who opened LaunchBox), and Windows denies it because User1 is not authenticated to access those files, only User2 is.

[Slag-O-Matic]

3 minutes ago, faeran said:

You are logged into Windows with User1. Within a file explorer you authenticate to your network drive using User2 who is the only account that has permission to access those files. You open LaunchBox and you drag and drop files from your network drive into LaunchBox. LaunchBox tries to gain access to those files based on User1's permission access (since that is the user who opened LaunchBox), and Windows denies it because User1 is not authenticated to access those files, only User2 is.

But that's what I mean: Why would LaunchBox need to authenticate at all? I could see this happening maybe if I haven't mapped the drive and instead I'm just forcing a connection to my server's IP address directly. LaunchBox might attempt a connection to w.x.y.z using the active Windows user; okay, plausible, but weird. But the drive is mapped. I'm not telling LaunchBox to go to w.x.y.z, I'm telling it to go to the Z: drive. All it knows, all it should have to know, is the Z: drive.

And if what you're positing is actually what's happening then that becomes a little more concerning from a security standpoint: Why is LaunchBox trying to login to a sharepoint without actually telling me it's trying to do so?

[faeran]

4 minutes ago, Slag-O-Matic said:

But that's what I mean: Why would LaunchBox need to authenticate at all? I could see this happening maybe if I haven't mapped the drive and instead I'm just forcing a connection to my server's IP address directly. LaunchBox might attempt a connection to w.x.y.z using the active Windows user; okay, plausible, but weird. But the drive is mapped. I'm not telling LaunchBox to go to w.x.y.z, I'm telling it to go to the Z: drive. All it knows, all it should have to know, is the Z: drive.

And if what you're positing is actually what's happening then that becomes a little more concerning from a security standpoint: Why is LaunchBox trying to login to a sharepoint without actually telling me it's trying to do so?

So, again. LaunchBox doesn't require any permissions, Windows does. You just happened to open LaunchBox using a specific user and in Windows that user comes with it's own permissions.

To highlight that point, if you hold down SHIFT and right click any application, you'll notice a new option that allows you to "Run as a different user", which allows you to open that application using another user and take on that user's permissions within that application.

[Slag-O-Matic]

Just now, faeran said:

So, again. LaunchBox doesn't require any permissions, Windows does. You just happened to open LaunchBox using a specific user and in Windows that user comes with it's own permissions.

To highlight that point, if you hold down SHIFT and right click any application, you'll notice a new option that allows you to "Run as a different user", which allows you to open that application using another user and take on that user's permissions within that application.

I'm sorry, I must be dense.

If I'm logged into the local machine as UserX and I map my server's drive using credentials for UserY (which doesn't exist on the local machine, but does exist on the server), then Windows accepts the permissions restrictions on the server for UserY. Windows itself, as well as literally every program and process running under Windows, honors those permissions restrictions when accessing the mapped drive.

So why doesn't LaunchBox?

[faeran]

2 minutes ago, Slag-O-Matic said:

I'm sorry, I must be dense.

If I'm logged into the local machine as UserX and I map my server's drive using credentials for UserY (which doesn't exist on the local machine, but does exist on the server), then Windows accepts the permissions restrictions on the server for UserY. Windows itself, as well as literally every program and process running under Windows, honors those permissions restrictions when accessing the mapped drive.

So why doesn't LaunchBox?

I'm not really saying this is your specific issue, and yeah, it's been a long time since I took my computer networking 101 class. I'm just trying to provide you with some basic knowledge of how Windows works in the hopes that it may point you in the right direction. It could be something entirely different that you are running into but it may be worth a few tests.

One way you could test this (based on your scenario), is by sharing the folders to UserX and seeing if that solves your issue. If it doesn't, then you may very well be running into another issue.

[Slag-O-Matic]

1 minute ago, faeran said:

I'm not really saying this is your specific issue, and yeah, it's been a long time since I took my computer networking 101 class. I'm just trying to provide you with some basic knowledge of how Windows works in the hopes that it may point you in the right direction. It could be something entirely different that you are running into but it may be worth a few tests.

One way you could test this (based on your scenario), is by sharing the folders to UserX and seeing if that solves your issue. If it doesn't, then you may very well be running into another issue.

I don't see how this could possibly be the cause of the problem but in the interest of science I'm willing to experiment. I'll try this out when I have a bit of time to spend on it and let you know. Though if it actually solves the problem then I'll have more and different questions.  🙂  Thanks.

[Slag-O-Matic]

22 hours ago, faeran said:

One way you could test this (based on your scenario), is by sharing the folders to UserX and seeing if that solves your issue. If it doesn't, then you may very well be running into another issue.

Okay, experiments complete. No success anywhere; I get the same error every time. Here's what I tried:

• I created a new admin-level user on my server with the same username and password as the one I'm using on my LaunchBox machine, with full access to the sharepoint where my ROMs are stored.
• Same as above, but I also unmapped/remapped the Z drive on my LaunchBox machine using those new credentials.
• Same as above, but I unmapped the Z drive completely and accessed the sharepoint directly through its IP address using those new credentials.

Any other ideas?

[skizzosjt]

Hi @Slag-O-Matic I figured I would see if I could recreate the issue when importing from a disk connected directly to a system running macOS. The disk I imported from was in fact a macOS boot disk running Mojave 10.14.6.

 

So I used my Windows 11 system to import from the macOS disk. I was capable to import via drag and drop, importing files button whether a single file or multiple files, and I could import a whole folder as well via folder button. I was importing directly from the share as well as from mapping it to a drive letter. I tried using the selection for leaving the files where they are currently located as well as copying them to the local location (as in the selections within LaunchBox's import wizard).

 

I did not run into any issues. It suggests this import from a macOS networked disk is possible and you may have some other challenge going on that is preventing the import sequence from going smooth. I just don't know what that challenge may be though.