Problems with Maintenance Plans and File Deletes

Hi,
I'm hoping that someone can help me out. I am trying to add a
maintenance task to delete files older than say 2 days. When I create
the plan the tast runs but no files are deleted. If I view the TSQL
script created it reads:
EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file
0,N'G:\sql_back_full',N'bak',N'12/18/2005 16:25:00'
I'm in Australia where the 18th Dec is 18/12/05. Not sure if that is
part of the problem.
Searching for info on msdn and books online yields no info on
xp_delete_file. Searching the MS support forums, google groups etc I
can find lots of messages where users are asking for assistance on how
to use this or why it doesn't work yet no one has an answer.
Considering the amount of money we just laid down for this product I am
absolutely astounded how little testing has gone into this maintenance
plans area.
Any MVPs have any ideas, or any one else found a work around on this.
Anyone know anyone on the Development team who can shed some light on
what this, why it doesn't work out of the box, and what can be done to
fix it?
StewI would like to find out more information on this as well. I will try to dig
a little deeper (again) and see if I can get someone to document this
feature. I will let you know if I find anything. IN the meantime try
running this manually in the query editor and see if it works as expected:
EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file
0,N'G:\sql_back_full',N'bak',N'20051218 16:25:00'
--
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
<windsurfing_stew@.yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:1135056599.840877.305720@.g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
> I'm hoping that someone can help me out. I am trying to add a
> maintenance task to delete files older than say 2 days. When I create
> the plan the tast runs but no files are deleted. If I view the TSQL
> script created it reads:
> EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file
> 0,N'G:\sql_back_full',N'bak',N'12/18/2005 16:25:00'
> I'm in Australia where the 18th Dec is 18/12/05. Not sure if that is
> part of the problem.
> Searching for info on msdn and books online yields no info on
> xp_delete_file. Searching the MS support forums, google groups etc I
> can find lots of messages where users are asking for assistance on how
> to use this or why it doesn't work yet no one has an answer.
> Considering the amount of money we just laid down for this product I am
> absolutely astounded how little testing has gone into this maintenance
> plans area.
> Any MVPs have any ideas, or any one else found a work around on this.
> Anyone know anyone on the Development team who can shed some light on
> what this, why it doesn't work out of the box, and what can be done to
> fix it?
> Stew
>|||Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your suggestion. I have tried this and unfortunately it
wasn't successful.
If you could 'dig a little deeper' to help on this one I'd be
particularly appreciative.
Looking forward to your response.
Stewart|||Any movement on this. Same problem. This is ridiculous.
"windsurfing_stew@.yahoo.com.au" wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm hoping that someone can help me out. I am trying to add a
> maintenance task to delete files older than say 2 days. When I create
> the plan the tast runs but no files are deleted. If I view the TSQL
> script created it reads:
> EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file
> 0,N'G:\sql_back_full',N'bak',N'12/18/2005 16:25:00'
> I'm in Australia where the 18th Dec is 18/12/05. Not sure if that is
> part of the problem.
> Searching for info on msdn and books online yields no info on
> xp_delete_file. Searching the MS support forums, google groups etc I
> can find lots of messages where users are asking for assistance on how
> to use this or why it doesn't work yet no one has an answer.
> Considering the amount of money we just laid down for this product I am
> absolutely astounded how little testing has gone into this maintenance
> plans area.
> Any MVPs have any ideas, or any one else found a work around on this.
> Anyone know anyone on the Development team who can shed some light on
> what this, why it doesn't work out of the box, and what can be done to
> fix it?
> Stew
>|||Nothing yet. Unfortunately the timing was wrong due to the holidays. I
think a lot of the SQL Dev team members took a long awaited vacation over
Christmas & New Years. I will ping them again.
--
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"Scott" <Scott@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C86196B0-95AF-4EE2-B654-A2266D7FBE22@.microsoft.com...
> Any movement on this. Same problem. This is ridiculous.
> "windsurfing_stew@.yahoo.com.au" wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I'm hoping that someone can help me out. I am trying to add a
>> maintenance task to delete files older than say 2 days. When I create
>> the plan the tast runs but no files are deleted. If I view the TSQL
>> script created it reads:
>> EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file
>> 0,N'G:\sql_back_full',N'bak',N'12/18/2005 16:25:00'
>> I'm in Australia where the 18th Dec is 18/12/05. Not sure if that is
>> part of the problem.
>> Searching for info on msdn and books online yields no info on
>> xp_delete_file. Searching the MS support forums, google groups etc I
>> can find lots of messages where users are asking for assistance on how
>> to use this or why it doesn't work yet no one has an answer.
>> Considering the amount of money we just laid down for this product I am
>> absolutely astounded how little testing has gone into this maintenance
>> plans area.
>> Any MVPs have any ideas, or any one else found a work around on this.
>> Anyone know anyone on the Development team who can shed some light on
>> what this, why it doesn't work out of the box, and what can be done to
>> fix it?
>> Stew
>>|||As far as I can tell, the new "cleanup" task can remove old files in a
single directory, but will not recurse. It took me a while to figure out I
had to specify a file extension and NOT include the leading "." in order to
get it to delete old .trn files. I now have all backups in a single folder,
instead of creating a new folder for each database. I also have two cleanup
tasks created to get rid of old .bak and another for .trn files. It's
functional now, but not evident when setting up.
This is a kludge. I would much rather have separate directories for old
backup files. The cleanup tool needs an option to recurse through
subdirectories when deleting files.
I agree that the backup options are a step backwards for SQL 2005.
"Andrew J. Kelly" <sqlmvpnooospam@.shadhawk.com> wrote in message
news:%23OBaViJEGHA.532@.TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> Nothing yet. Unfortunately the timing was wrong due to the holidays. I
> think a lot of the SQL Dev team members took a long awaited vacation over
> Christmas & New Years. I will ping them again.
> --
> Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
>
> "Scott" <Scott@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:C86196B0-95AF-4EE2-B654-A2266D7FBE22@.microsoft.com...
>> Any movement on this. Same problem. This is ridiculous.
>> "windsurfing_stew@.yahoo.com.au" wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I'm hoping that someone can help me out. I am trying to add a
>> maintenance task to delete files older than say 2 days. When I create
>> the plan the tast runs but no files are deleted. If I view the TSQL
>> script created it reads:
>> EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file
>> 0,N'G:\sql_back_full',N'bak',N'12/18/2005 16:25:00'
>> I'm in Australia where the 18th Dec is 18/12/05. Not sure if that is
>> part of the problem.
>> Searching for info on msdn and books online yields no info on
>> xp_delete_file. Searching the MS support forums, google groups etc I
>> can find lots of messages where users are asking for assistance on how
>> to use this or why it doesn't work yet no one has an answer.
>> Considering the amount of money we just laid down for this product I am
>> absolutely astounded how little testing has gone into this maintenance
>> plans area.
>> Any MVPs have any ideas, or any one else found a work around on this.
>> Anyone know anyone on the Development team who can shed some light on
>> what this, why it doesn't work out of the box, and what can be done to
>> fix it?
>> Stew
>>
>