Knowledge Base

No mapping between account names and security IDs was done

Category: Troubleshooting & error messages
Date: 01 Feb 2011
Product: SQL Backup
Versions: 5.0,5.1
Fix Version: 5.2

The following error message may be reported when starting the SQL Backup Agent Service from the Windows Services control panel:
 
'SQL Backup Agent startup error: error initialising IPC objects. No mapping between account names and security IDs was done'
 
The service controller says 'The SQL Backup Agent-<INSTANCENAME> service terminated with service-specific error 5000 (0x1388).'
 
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

SQL Backup uses semaphores, events, and shared memory to communicate with the SQL Server. Part of this process involves verifying that the communications mechanisms used to pass information between the SQL Backup extended stored procedure, which is running in the SQL Server's process, and the SQL Backup Agent Service process, are being accessed using the SQL Backup Agent Service startup account. In order to do this, either the local Security Account Manager database or the Active Directory server or domain controller must be accessed to verify the SQL Backup Agent account's Security Identifier (SID).

Because the resolution process for an account SID is different depending on the format of the specified account name, it may help to change the format.

A SQL Backup Agent startup account name can either be in User Principal Name (UPN) format, which typically resembles an email address, or it can be in traditional Windows NT format, which is DOMAIN\USERNAME. The account resolution process for a UPN involves the extra step of querying the Domain Name Server for an active directory Global Catalog server for the AD forest specified in the domain component of the UPN. If there is a problem resolving the Globgal Catalog's IP address, this causes a failure acquiring the account SID that may not happen when using the Windows NT username format.

Likewise, there are situations where specifying the SQL Backup Agent startup account name in UPN format will be successful when using the Windows NT format would fail.

Therefore, if this error occurs when starting the SQL Backup Agent Service, the first step in troubleshooting it is normally to try changing the startup account name format so it uses either the UPN (user@domain) format of the Windows NT (DOMAIN\USER) format.

If this error occurs on an installation of SQL Backup where the SQL Backup Agent's startup account uses a local computer security account, it may be advisable to change the computer component of the startup account's user name. For instance, if the startup user is currently .\accountname, try using COMPUTER\ACCOUNTNAME. Using the alias for the computer name (.) has been known to cause this issue in some cases.

This root cause of this issue had been fixed in SQL Backup version 5.2. Newer versions of SQL Backup will not suffer from this problem.