Multiple devices are detected as being the same device

Magnus Box tells machines apart by their "device ID". This is automatically determined from a mix of hardware and software identifiers.

One possible cause of this issue is if the two VMs were originally clones of each other. If you have cloned a VM in the past, it might have the same hardware and software identifiers, and so appear to Magnus Box as the same device.

If multiple devices appear to Magnus Box as the same device, they will share the same Protected Items and job scheduling. This causes follow-on issues for logging and reporting.

You can resolve this issue by changing the hardware or software ID for the affected VM. This will influence Magnus Box's device ID to force the devices to be detected as different devices.

On both Linux and MacOS, the SSH host keys are one signal that influences the generated device IDs. Installing SSH, or regenerating the SSH host keys, will cause the device ID to change.

On Windows, you can add extra data to influence the generated device ID by creating a registry key.

1. Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe)
2. Browse to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\backup-tool folder key, creating it if it does not already exist
   • The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\productname folder key is also recognized for backwards compatibility
3. Create a "String Value" with name DeviceIdentificationEntropy
4. Set any random text as the Data value. This value will influence the generated device ID.
5. Restart all Magnus Box's services (e.g. backup.delegate and backup.elevator)