ERASEFILES_ATSTART fails to delete all backup files

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  Hi
  
  The ERASEFILES_ATSTART and ERASEFILES options value is number of days. This is calculated as 24 hour blocks, so the only files deleted will be greater than X*24 hours old.
  
  In your script all the files that remained should be less than 24 hours old.
  
  Regards
  Dan

  Daniel Handley June 02, 2005 12:31

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  The server has multiple databases, the SP backs up TRN log files every 2 hours and deletes log backup files older than one day on all databases as configured, except for a few. The backup files that are not being deleted go back to the date that the SQLBackup job was created.
  
  Any known issues with long file names? This might be entirely irrelevant but it seems that the backup files that are not being deleted are 20+ char long. Doesn't seem to be a 15+1 char issue as several of the databases are longer that 16 char but less than 20.

  stratburst June 02, 2005 12:55

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  Hi
  
  We have had no reports of long file name problems. Can you check that the SQLAgent user has adequate rights to delete files from the directory, and that you are running version 3.2 .
  
  Regards
  Dan

  Daniel Handley June 03, 2005 11:37

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  I have run some tests and have verified that this appears as a bug in SQLBackup. Erasefiles will not remove files with database names that are longer than 22 charactors. Resolution: export database with long name to database with name less than 22 charactors. Erasefiles will then work as expected.

  stratburst June 17, 2005 16:07

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  Thx for reporting the bug.

  petey June 18, 2005 11:58

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  The problem is that database names are truncated to 22 characters in the SQL Backup file header block. For ERASEFILES to work, it needs to find an exact match for the database name.
  
  This will be fixed in a future release. If you need this to work now on English operating systems, you can do the following, but note that this is an unofficial, unsupported workaround and has not been fully tested:
  
  Using a hex editor, look for the following sequence in sqlbackup.exe and sqlbackupc.exe:
  
  B916000000BA01000000
  
  Change the value 16 (hex for 22) to 2C (hex for 44). You should find two occurences of this sequence. The first is for the instance name, and the second for the database name. Making both changes will then store the first 44 characters of the instance/database name in the SQL Backup file header block.

  petey June 19, 2005 12:32

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  Has this been fixed in the latest version of SQLBackup?

  Mel July 26, 2005 11:43

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  Hi Mel,
  
  Sorry, but we haven't released a new version since the last post on 19 June. I'm sure that the fix will be included in the next release.

  Brian Donahue July 26, 2005 12:53

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  Has this been fixed in the latest version of SQLBackup yet...?

  mkleppe November 28, 2005 17:40

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  This will not be changed in version 3 as on non-English systems, the 44 bytes need to cater for multi-byte character sets.
  
  In version 4, the full name of the database (max 128 characters) will be stored as a unicode string.

  petey November 28, 2005 20:41

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