Cloud Password for Encrypted Backup Script Fails
So here is the 2nd issue I had after upgrading one of my computers (Bugatti) to 22510. I don't know if this is related to the upgrade or not, but on the 27th of Feb, the Cloud Backup script started failing every day with a message that the "password was incorrect". The script and the backup routine have been running flawlessly for the last two months. Nothing on the PC was changed other than initiating an Acronis 22510 upgrade around then (that ironically failed). I got Acronis support on a TeamViewer session to try and fix the issue. I could enter the password manually to get to 20 days worth of recovery files in the cloud backup. I could enter the password to edit settings for the backup script. There was no way to re-enter or update the password for the actual daily backup routine. The Acronis tech decided to do the 22510 upgrade and that created the other issue I just posted about the rogue "Tesla scripts being downloaded from another computer on my network to "Bugatti" script folder and showing up under "This Computer". At least the Tech got to see that problem show up in real-time. I knew the fix instantly and removed the scripts from the scripts folder as indicated in my prior post. He was at a loss after an hour of working on my PC.
After we finished the call with no resolution, I decided to open up the backup archive for this computer and copied the Cloud backup script from the backup for both the last date the script ran (2/27) and the day before that (2/26). I replaced the current Cloud script with the 2/26 version and it started working!!! Somehow, the password in the script got corrupted. Replacing the script with a backup copy of it was ironically the way to get it working. It would be nice if there was a way to have just re-entered the password to fix a corruption issue like this.
Steve, its the first time I've encountered the issue as well. There was no malware involved (I have extremely good protection on all of these machines). Active Protection was turned off on this machine since November after I encountered the rogue backup scripts issue.
One guess is that it was related to my attempt to upgrade that system to 22510 from the prior version (I had held off on that upgrade after the MMSM mess being created by the Acronis servers....as you remember, upgrading to 22510 reenables MMSM). The upgrade failed, but it is apparent that during the upgrade process the Acronis cloud servers are involved and are capable of downloading scripts to the PC's Acronis scripts folder (the Acronis Tech saw that in real-time). It's possible that this is how the file got corrupted. I am running two very simple backup routines on 4 computers on the same network, a Acronis Cloud backup and a local NAS backup, once a day (all incrementals). No file syncing or any other Acronis "features" being run.
The other possibility is a simple change I made to the script around that same time to change my "Notification" text string that gets sent to me each day for that backup. I only changed the Notification text and saved that change. How that could corrupt the encryption text string imbedded in the script, I have no idea, but I did get a copy of the offending script and am going to compare the text in the file with the backup copy that got it working again.
The point to my posting is to let the community know that if they encounter this issue, there is a way to restart the same cloud backup thread, without losing the existing cloud backups. Acronis needs a feature that would allow the user to "re-set" or re-confirm the encryption password for the backup script instead of going through what I did to re-start it with an older copy of the script containing the correct encrypted encryption (not to be redundant) password.
Chris, understand the reason for the topic in alerting other users. I have occasionally done manual edits to the Script .tib.tis files and have never seen any corruption happen, so this is still a mystery as to why it would happen.
One consequence of the Dashboard / MMMS fiasco from last October / November was that I deleted nearly all my computers from the Dashboard and given that there is no method of adding them back again without having to uninstall and reinstall ATI - they remain deleted!
I cannot think of any reason why MMMS should alter the script .tib.tis files but obviously this did happen over that period as evidenced by the change in automatic cleanup, notifications, backup scheme etc. It didn't affect any of my Cloud backups but did hit my local / NAS ones!
The password change has happened to me in the past too. This was back in 2017 or 2018 version though and haven't seen it yet.
Compare the two scripts side by side in a text editor and see if the password fields are blank or different!
Never found a fix. I did the same as you and it worked after that... for a time. Eventually, the backup stopped connecting down the road and I ended up having to start it from scratch again. I haven't had it happen again, but it did happen and sounds like yours did the same thing.
Thanks for sharing that Bobbo_3C0X1.
I compared the good script to the bad script today and saw that encryption type was blank on the corrupted script and the good script was set to aes256. The encryted password field on that bad script was also blank. Other than that, the xml code was identical. It looked like the Acronis app (server side or client side) that creates/modifies the xml file had turned off encryption for that backup. I've saved both files for future reference/discussion.