Access Denied (code 1610)

Situation

A backup plan is terminated with the following warning: Access to one or more backup paths is denied

Cause

This warning indicates that the backup process does not have sufficient permissions to access one or more source files or folders.

For a backup to succeed:

• The backup process must have read permission for all source files and folders.
• If the backup destination is a local file system, the backup process must also have write permission for the destination path.

How Backup Plan Ownership Affects Permissions

On macOS and Linux, the account that owns the backup plan configuration file '(.cbb)' determines the permissions available to the backup process.

• Plans created from the Management Console are owned by 'root', allowing the backup process to run with administrative privileges.
• Plans created locally using the Backup Agent GUI are owned by the currently signed-in user. In this case, the backup process can access only the files and folders that this user is permitted to read.

As a result, a backup plan created locally may be unable to access files that require higher privileges or belong to another user account.

Solution

Verify that the account used to run the backup has the required permissions to access all backup source locations (and the backup destination if it is a local path).

If you need information on managing file permissions for your operating system, refer to the official documentation:

• macOS: Apple Support documentation on file and folder permissions.

• Linux: Refer to the documentation for your Linux distribution or the GNU documentation on chmod.

Additional Requirements for macOS

On macOS, this issue is frequently caused by operating system privacy restrictions rather than file-system permissions.

Ensure that Backup Service has Full Disk Access. For instructions, see the following article.

Workaround (macOS and Linux): Exclude Files and Folders

If certain files or folders do not need to be backed up, you can exclude them from the backup plan:

1. Open the backup plan which produced the Access Denied error, then click Edit.
2. Follow the backup wizard step to the Backup Source step.
3. Exclude files and folders which have been displayed.
4. Once you are done, click Next.
5. Follow the wizard step to save the backup plan configuration, and then run the changed plan.