Failover Backups failing with error : Operation not permitted

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance
• Network Observability

Issue/Introduction

Smarts Failover Backup Appear to fail with error: Operation not permitted

Environment

All Supported Smarts versions

Cause

• One may see the error like the following while running backups (with debug enabled for failover manager) in the Failover Manager Domain logs.

scp: /opt/InCharge/<Suite>/smarts/local/rules/<directory>: set times: Operation not permitted

• This is because the failover manager and services are set to to be run as non-root user. When the backup-actions script attempts to copy files (owned by root) under local directory, the above error may be encountered caused because of a permissions issue.
• Hence, the local directory and the files contained within it should be owned by the non-root user configured with failover manager. 

Resolution

With reference to the documentation: Set up passwordless SSH Access to the Failover Manager Servers for non-root users, it is recommended to set user-permissions to smarts local directory to the non-root user.

Hence, if the issue appears with respect to the permissions, please run the following:

• sudo chown -R <non-root-user>:<user-group> <Smarts Install Directory>/smarts/local/

• sudo chmod -R g+w <Smarts Install Directory>/smarts/local

Once the permissions are set, please try the backup actions again.

If you continue to face the issue post setting the right permissions, please get in touch with Broadcom Support by raising a service request and quoting this KB article.