Knowledge Base

SQL Backup Agent cannot start due to account lookup error

Category: Troubleshooting & error messages
Date: 27 Nov 2008
Product: SQL Backup
When you install the SQL Backup Server Components you encounter the error: "Windows could not start the SQL Backup Agent on Local Computer. For more information, review the System Event Log. If this is a non-Microsoft service, contact the service vendor, and refer to the service-specific error code 5000"

You check the Windows Application Event Logs and see the following:

"SQL Backup Agent startup error: error initialising IPC objects. Primary
LookupAccountName failed: No mapping between account names and security IDs
was done"

If you see the error above the resolution is to change the MSSQL Server service to use the domain\user login rather than the .\user login format.
When using the second format the SID information cannot be obtained and so the security needed to be setup between the two services cannot be completed.

This is due to a domain trust issue and receiving the sid information. An explanation of what is happening in SQL Backup is as follows.

The SQL Backup service needs a way to communicate with the extended stored procedure, and it does this using a set of semaphores, events and shared memory. These interprocess communication (IPC) objects will be written to/read from. For security purposes, we set up these objects so that only the SQL Server service user and SQL Backup Agent service user has rights to perform those tasks. That is why we need to look up the SQL Server service user and get it's security identifier (SID) - so that we can grant it rights to the IPC objects.

If you see any errors related to the service not starting, other than above, please email support@red-gate.com with the error and related information.