Environment

Windows Server 2003 R2 on a Dell PowerEdge 1900. Services for Macintosh is installed to support the one Mac user in the office. Veritas Backup Exec for Windows Servers version 9.

Issue

Thousands of instances of BackupExecAgentBrowser Event ID 57414 errors in the Application Event Log, one every two minutes. The message reads “The Agent Browser experienced an error retrieving the list of Macintosh Backup Agents in the AppleTalk Zone '[OURZONE]'. This problem can prevent the Agent Browser from finding Macintosh Backup Agents for this Zone.”

The Symantec Knowledge Base does have an article number 252100 on the issue. Unfortunately the article offers no suggestions beyond restarting services, rebooting the system, and applying updates. Since this machine has been rebooted from time to time, I doubted that stopping and starting the services that would help, although now that I look at it, I'm not so sure it was rebooted since these error messages started. (Due to the frequency of this message, the event log only goes back about two weeks.)

Resolution

I used my blog entry from last June on Configuring Services for Macintosh under Windows Server 2003 to review how to fiddle with Services for Macintosh. I went in to Routing and Remote Access, opened the properties for the adapter, and clicked on the Update List button. Then I clicked on Apply (which took a couple minutes), and finally on OK.

For good measure, I then restarted the Backup Exec Agent Browser service. 

After this, I got an informational message for each printer in the Application Event Log:  MacPrint raised Event ID 2010, “The printer [printer name] is now available to the AppleTalk network.” But no more BackupExec error messages!

Update 8/14/2009:  Got this same error again after setting up a VPN in Routing and Remote Access. Google led me back to my own blog entry (doh!). In the server properties, I had unchecked “Allow AppleTalk-based remote clients to connect to this server,” thinking I was disabling VPN access from AppleTalk clients. I also unchecked “Enable this computer as a Router” since I didn't particularly want to route VPN connections. Now I realize that these steps probably disabled all AppleTalk access. Oops! I'm reversing those two changes re-applying the AppleTalk Routing adapter properties as described above, and re-starting the Backup Exec Agent Browser service. No more 57414 messages!

Step 1:  Install File and Print Services for Macintosh 

I was able to use Windows Component setup to install File and Print Services for Macintosh, which also installed the AppleTalk protocol. But I couldn't figure out why the zone list dropdown was empty (under Control Panel > Network Connections > Local Area Connection > Properties > AppleTalk Protocol > Properties). I installed Windows Server 2003 in a new virtual machine and it was still empty!

Step 2:  Configure AppleTalk Routing

Finally I started to grasp that the zone list comes from a router. Since this network has no external AppleTalk router, I needed to configure the Windows 2003 Server as an AppleTalk router. The follow procedure is expanded from the Help and Support topic “Configure AppleTalk routing”, also found on TechNet.

1. Open Administrative Tools > Routing and Remote Access. If you're not already using RRAS, there will be a red down-arrow next to the server name indicating that the service is not running. As far as I know, the Routing and Remote Access Service does not need to run to enable AppleTalk routing.
2. Under Routing and Remote Access, double-click your server and right-click AppleTalk Routing.
3. Click Enable AppleTalk Routing.
4. In the Adapters list, right-click an adapter, and then click Properties.
5. Configure seed routing, network number allocation, and the zone list as appropriate for the computer.
   1. Check Enable seed routing on this network.
   2. Set the Network range From 1 To 100. This could get complicated in a multi-router/multi-zone environment, but for this single-server situation, 1-100 is more than enough:  at 253 nodes per number, that allows for 253 * 100 = 25,300 AppleTalk nodes.
   3. Under Zones, click on New and type in the desired Zone Name. Set As Default is grayed out because there is only one zone:  it already is the default.
   4. Click on OK to close the adapter's properties. This seems to take a few seconds.

Now, when you go back to Control Panel > Network Connections > Local Area Connection > Properties > AppleTalk Protocol > Properties, you should see the zone you just defined listed and selected in the drop-down.

Step 3:  Set Up Printer and Folder Sharing

It looks like a shared printer will automatically be shared by Print Server for Macintosh without further configuration.

However, folder shares (Mac “volumes”) must be set up individually. For instructions, see “Create a Macintosh-accessible volume” in Help or on TechNet.

Notes on Folder Sharing

• If the folder is shared for both Windows and Macintosh users, it should appear twice in the list of shares under Computer Management > System Tools > Shared Folders > Shares, once with Type = Windows and again with Type = Macintosh.
• When you set up a new Macintosh share with the Share a Folder Wizard, the share is read-only. To make it writeable, you have to go back in to edit the share's properties and clear the This volume is read-only checkbox. I did not set a password on the shares since file access is controlled by Window file permissions.
• Macintosh shares do not appear when you look at a folder's sharing properties under Windows Explorer; you have to edit them from Computer Management > System Tools.