CruiseControl.NET VSS SSDIR

Switched from a test SourceSafe database to production, which was on a separate machine. The ccnet.config file used to have a line that specified the srcsafe.ini file, saying
<ssdir>C:\local\srcsafe.ini</ssdir>
which worked fine.

I switched it to
<ssdir>\\remotemach\vssdb\srcsafe.ini</ssdir>
and started getting the message
ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.CruiseControlException: Source control operation failed: No VSS database (srcsafe.ini) found. Use the SSDIR environment variable or run netsetup.

I stumbled around for a while, but finally changed the <ssdir> tag to just the directory, removing the srcsafe.ini file, as in
<ssdir>\\remotemach\vssdb\</ssdir>
and that got it working.