Re: Mantanace Plan not deleting old files

From: Andrew J. Kelly (sqlmvpnooospam_at_shadhawk.com)
Date: 09/17/04 

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 10:13:31 -0400

Here is a good summary of the normal issues related to this by Bill from MS:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q303292

This is likely to be either a permissions problem or a sharing violation
problem. The maintenance plan is run as a job, and jobs are run by the
SQLServerAgent service.

Permissions:
1. Determine the startup account for the SQLServerAgent service
(Start|Programs|Administrative tools|Services|SQLServerAgent|Startup). This
account is the security context for jobs, and thus the maintenance plan.
2. If SQLServerAgent is started using LocalSystem (as opposed to a domain
account) then skip step 3.
3. On that box, log onto NT as that account. Using Explorer, attempt to
delete an expired backup. If that succeeds then go to Sharing Violation
section.
4. Log onto NT with an account that is an administrator and use Explorer to
look at the Properties|Security of the folder (where the backups reside)
and ensure the SQLServerAgent startup account has Full Control. If the
SQLServerAgent startup account is LocalSystem, then the account to consider
is SYSTEM.
5. In NT, if an account is a member of an NT group, and if that group has
Access is Denied, then that account will have Access is Denied, even if
that account is also a member of the Administrators group. Thus you may
need to check group permissions (if the Startup Account is a member of a
group).
6. Keep in mind that permissions (by default) are inherited from a parent
folder. Thus, if the backups are stored in C:\bak, and if someone had
denied permission to the SQLServerAgent startup account for C:\, then
C:\bak will inherit access is denied.

Sharing violation:
This is likely to be rooted in a timing issue, with the most likely cause
being another scheduled process (such as NT Backup or Anti-Virus software)
having the backup file open at the time when the SQLServerAgent (i.e., the
maintenance plan job) tried to delete it.
1. Download filemon and handle from www.sysinternals.com.
2. I am not sure whether filemon can be scheduled, or you might be able to
use NT scheduling services to start filemon just before the maintenance
plan job is started, but the filemon log can become very large, so it would
be best to start it some short time before the maintenance plan starts.
3. Inspect the filemon log for another process that has that backup file
open (if your lucky enough to have started filemon before this other
process grabs the backup folder), and inspect the log for the results when
the SQLServerAgent agent attempts to open that same file.
4. Schedule the job or that other process to do their work at different
times.
5. You can use the handle utility if you are around at the time when the
job is scheduled to run.

If the backup files are going to a \\share or a mapped drive (as opposed to
local drive), then you will need to modify the above (with respect to where
the tests and utilities are run).

Finally, inspection of the maintenance plan's history report might be
useful.

Thanks,

Bill Hollinshead
Microsoft, SQL Server 

-- 
Andrew J. Kelly  SQL MVP
"Jim Abel" <jim.abel@lmco.com> wrote in message
news:177f01c49cbe$504699e0$a301280a@phx.gbl...
> I have a maintanace Plan establishe that is working excep
> for on nagging item.  The plan does both full backups and
> transaction log backups each day.  It is supposed to
> delete files older than 3 days old but does not.  I have
> to manually go and clear the old files on a regular basis
> to keep from filling up the disk.  I have not seen any
> error or know what to look for to see if something is
> wrong.  I thought that if a full backup was done that it
> emptyed the transaction logs but that dies not appear to
> be the case either and is why I have the transition logs
> in the mainance plan.  Any information on how to get the
> old fikes to delete?

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Transaction log backup
    ... This is likely to be either a permissions problem or a sharing violation ... account is the security context for jobs, ... delete an expired backup. ... SQLServerAgent startup account is LocalSystem, ...
    (microsoft.public.sqlserver.server)
  • Re: Failure to Remove Old Transaction Log Backups
    ... This is likely to be either a permissions problem or a sharing violation ... account is the security context for jobs, ... delete an expired backup. ... SQLServerAgent startup account is LocalSystem, ...
    (microsoft.public.sqlserver.server)
  • Re: Maintenance Plan
    ... This is likely to be either a permissions problem or a sharing violation ... account is the security context for jobs, ... delete an expired backup. ... SQLServerAgent startup account is LocalSystem, ...
    (microsoft.public.sqlserver.tools)
  • Re: Transaction Log Backups do not delete after specified no of days
    ... This is likely to be either a permissions problem or a sharing violation ... account is the security context for jobs, ... delete an expired backup. ... SQLServerAgent startup account is LocalSystem, ...
    (microsoft.public.sqlserver.server)
  • Re: Transaction Logs
    ... This is likely to be either a permissions problem or a sharing violation ... account is the security context for jobs, ... delete an expired backup. ... SQLServerAgent startup account is LocalSystem, ...
    (microsoft.public.sqlserver.server)