Question

xcopy gives invalid drive specification

Asked by: ghosting

Hello,

I am still kinda of new to PERL programming, and need some help with system commands, pipes, and network shares / drives on Windows.  I am trying to XCOPY a file to a network drive or share, but I am getting "Invalid Drive Specification" when I run the script from CGI.  If I drop down to command line, and simply DOS XCOPY the files, it works fine.

What do I need to specify for PERL so that it KNOWS about my network drives and shares?  Why is it that when I try it from DOS it works fine, but when I run it from my script it fails with "Invalid Drive Specification"?

        my $cmd = 'xcopy '.$datafile.' '.$mailpickup.'';
        local *ALERTOUT = IO::File->new_tmpfile;
        local *ALERTERR = IO::File->new_tmpfile;
        local *ALERTIN = IO::File->new_tmpfile;
        my $pid = open3(">&ALERTIN", \*ALERTOUT, ">&ALERTERR", $cmd);

I am using IPC::Open3 to make the system calls and read the STDOUT & STDERR into arrays for parsing so I can check the results of the operation.  I can post the rest of code if needed, but I've tried replacing the $CMD arguments with something simple like "dir" and it works fine, no errors.  So I think it's got something to do with the network aware drives and shares available to PERL, please help...

Thanks in advance,
G

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Asked On
2007-03-22 at 16:28:10ID22467145
Tags

drive

,

xcopy

,

invalid

,

specification

Topic

Perl Programming Language

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: teraplanePosted on 2007-03-22 at 16:42:22ID: 18775921

How do you specify the netowork drive letter? You may need to say something like
 xcopy F:\\some\\file.txt G:\\other\\file.txt

The following gives more detail
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePerl/5.8/faq/Windows/ActivePerl-Winfaq8.html#When_I_try_to_open_a_file_I_get

 

by: ghostingPosted on 2007-03-22 at 17:04:00ID: 18776085

I am not convinced this is the problem, the single quote vs double quote issue with escaping the "\" character.  To be sure, I had my subroutine print out the $CMD argument to the browser, to check what was being escaped...

xcopy C:\XAOSys\var\www\linepull\config\Error_report.txt \\erp2\pickup\

is the actual output I am getting from my routine.  Yet I still get invalid drive specification... WHY?
I was well aware of the "\" escaping, my editor warns me if I don't properly escape and close something in quotes, single or double.  I use eclipse, http://e-p-i-c.sourceforge.net/ which ROCKS!

I've got to wrap up for today, but any suggestions on how or why this doesn't work and what to make it work, would be most appreciated.  

Thanks for all your responses,
G

 

by: bebonhamPosted on 2007-03-22 at 18:05:24ID: 18776511

I agree with teraplane it is probably an escaping issue.
In any case, the perlscript is fine as I have posted it below -- as in, it works.
I suggest you use the below and replace test.txt with your file, and compy and share with the appropriate data.  If it still fails you need to look at your perl installation, your windows installation. but there is no point in looking further at the script. It works.


use IO::FILE;
use IPC::Open3;

$datafile = "C:\\test.txt";
$mailpickup = "\\\\compy\\share\\";

my $cmd = 'xcopy ' . $datafile . ' ' . $mailpickup;

        local *ALERTOUT = IO::File->new_tmpfile;
        local *ALERTERR = IO::File->new_tmpfile;
        local *ALERTIN = IO::File->new_tmpfile;
        my $pid = open3(">&ALERTIN", \*ALERTOUT, ">&ALERTERR", $cmd);


 

by: clockwatcherPosted on 2007-03-22 at 19:39:02ID: 18777233

If the path isn't the problem then it's probably a permissions problem.   Which webserver are you using?

If you're running IIS and you haven't changed the IIS authentication method for the script (or more typically the directory housing your script), it will be running as a local user account (IUSR_Machinename) and that local user account won't have access to the network.    To change it,  from the IIS MMC navigate to the folder housing your script, right-click (either the directory or the script itself), select Properties, File (or Directory) Security Tab, Anonymous access and authentication control section Edit.., and change the account used for anonymous access to a network account.

If you're using Apache, you'd need to change the service so it's running as an account with network permissions (rather than the LocalSystem account which is the default).  Control Panel, Admin Tools, Services, Apache, right-click, Properties, Log On.

 

by: ghostingPosted on 2007-03-23 at 10:56:30ID: 18781757

Thanks clockwatcher,

It totally was IIS, darn it!  I simply changed the permissions to run as a standard domain admin with rights to all my network shares, viola!  A little scary, so I think I'll create a Power User or Backup operator and make that user my IIS anonymous user, since I need access to several domains for my archiving project.

Thanks and have a good one...
G

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