Chuck Kollars: VSS Maintenance Script

This material on VSS is an archive from fall 1998. First I changed jobs so I no longer had an association with VSS. Then after a couple more years I changed careers completely so I'm no longer associated with high tech at all. I've left the VSS material on this site for use by others, even though I no longer remember exactly what it's about or even understand some of it.

This material was originally posted on a website whose address has changed. Its old address may have been any of www.shore.net/~ckollars/xxxxx or www3.shore.net/~ckollars/xxxxx or www.primushost.com/~ckollars/xxxxx or www3.primushost.com/~ckollars/xxxxx. Its current address is simply www.ckollars.org/xxxxx

This material reflects experience with VSS5. The user interfaces and the feature set in VSS6 were virtually identical, so almost all of this material continued to apply for several years. But I have no detailed knowledge of the user interfaces or feature set of the now current VSS2005 and so don't know which parts of this material still apply.

This script is implemented with WinBatch. WinBatch is a third party tool that provides plenty of control structures, many built in functions including some utility functions not available in the base OS, keystroke stuffing, menu item invocation, and monitoring of window titles. It's thought this script could be easily ported to another language, even a simpler one that did not do keystroke stuffing, menu item invocation, or monitoring of window titles, in particular the new Command Shell in Windows NT 4 with the NT Resource Kit as described by the book Windows NT Shell Scripting.

;debug(@ON) ; Backup_vss.wbt wwwnt32i=1 result=AddExtender("WWWNT32I.DLL") if (result==@FALSE) wwwnt32i=0 endif vssshare="%param1%" vssloc="%param2%" auto="%param3%" backup=1 eject=1 Ticks = 10 if auto=="" auto = 0 warn=0 shutdown=0 else auto = 1 warn=1 shutdown=1 endif ;vssshare = "VSS_Test" ;vssloc = "d:\vss_test" ;Get and clean up the date tdate = TimeDate() gosub CLEAN_DATE logfile = "c:\vss\tools\backup\logs\%vssshare%-%date%.log" if (auto==@FALSE) ;Open Main Dialog while @TRUE gosub MAIN_DIALOG ; Did we select Cancel? if ButtonPushed==9 BoxOpen("","Shutting Down") Delay(1) BoxShut() exit endif if ButtonPushed==7 break endif endwhile; endif loghand = FileOpen(logfile,"WRITE") tdate=TimeDate() gosub CLEAN_DATE FileWrite(loghand, "Starting Backup of %vssshare% on %tdate%") FileWrite(loghand, "-----------------------------------------------------------------") ;Notify users database will be going down. if warn tdate=TimeDate() gosub CLEAN_DATE FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : Warn users that database is going down.") ;RunWait(Environment("COMSPEC"), "/c net send /USERS %vssshare% will be going down in 5 minutes!") ;Sleep for 5 minutes tdate=TimeDate() gosub CLEAN_DATE FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : Sleeping for 5 minutes.") Delay(300) endif ;Stop VSS Share to down database if shutdown if wwwnt32i tdate=TimeDate() gosub CLEAN_DATE FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : Removing %vssshare% to shut down database.") result=wntShareDel("",vssshare,0) if (result==@FALSE) FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : Error removing %vssshare%, share not found.") endif else FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : Unable to remove %vssshare%, NT Network extender not loaded.") endif endif ;Backup Database if backup tdate=TimeDate() gosub CLEAN_DATE FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : Starting Backup of %vssshare%.") FileClose(loghand) loghand=0 ;RunWait("ntbackup", "backup %vssloc% /e /v /d %vssshare% on %date% /b /hc:on /l%logfile%") ;Turn off Hardware compression to see if it speeds up backup Run("ntbackup", "backup %vssloc% /e /v /d %vssshare% on %date% /b /hc:on /l%logfile%") gosub CheckWindows endif ;Eject Tape if eject tdate=TimeDate() gosub CLEAN_DATE if !loghand then loghand = FileOpen(logfile,"APPEND") FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : Ejecting Tape.") RunWait("ntbackup", "eject") endif ;Recreate VSS Share if shutdown if !loghand then loghand = FileOpen(logfile,"APPEND") if wwwnt32i tdate=TimeDate() gosub CLEAN_DATE FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : Recreating %vssshare% to open database.") result=wntShareAdd("",vssloc,vssshare,0,-1) if (result==@FALSE) FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : Error creating %vssshare%.") endif else FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : Unable to recreate %vssshare%, NT Network extender not loaded.") endif endif if !loghand then loghand = FileOpen(logfile,"APPEND") tdate=TimeDate() FileWrite(loghand, "-----------------------------------------------------------------") FileWrite(loghand, "Backup of %vssshare% on %tdate% complete") FileClose(loghand) exit :CLEAN_DATE date = tdate time = strsub(date,14,strlen(date)-14) date = strsub(date,5,strlen(date)-5) date = strreplace(date,"/","-") date = strtrim(date) index = strscan(date," ",0,@FWDSCAN) date = strsub(date,1,index-1) if (strlen(date) < 8) then date = "0%date%" return :MAIN_DIALOG VSSBackupFormat=`WWWDLGED,5.0` VSSBackupCaption=`VSS Backup` VSSBackupX=10000 VSSBackupY=10000 VSSBackupWidth=195 VSSBackupHeight=80 VSSBackupNumControls=10 VSSBackup01=`2,3,102,DEFAULT,STATICTEXT,DEFAULT,"VSS Share Name"` VSSBackup02=`70,2,120,DEFAULT,EDITBOX,vssshare,""` VSSBackup03=`2,17,102,DEFAULT,STATICTEXT,DEFAULT,"Physical Location"` VSSBackup04=`70,16,120,DEFAULT,EDITBOX,vssloc,""` VSSBackup05=`12,31,102,DEFAULT,CHECKBOX,warn,"Warn Users",1` VSSBackup06=`12,45,102,DEFAULT,CHECKBOX,shutdown,"Stop/Start Database",1` VSSBackup07=`120,31,102,DEFAULT,CHECKBOX,backup,"Backup Database",1` VSSBackup08=`120,45,102,DEFAULT,CHECKBOX,eject,"Eject Tape",1` VSSBackup09=`58,63,64,DEFAULT,PUSHBUTTON,DEFAULT,"&Ok",7` VSSBackup10=`126,63,64,DEFAULT,PUSHBUTTON,DEFAULT,"&Cancel",9` ButtonPushed=Dialog("VSSBackup") return :CheckWindows while WinExist("Backup") == @TRUE If WinExist("Insert Tape") == @TRUE SendKeysTo("Insert Tape", "!n") Delay(Ticks) tdate=TimeDate() gosub CLEAN_DATE if !loghand then loghand = FileOpen(logfile,"APPEND") FileWrite(loghand, "%time% : ERROR!! No TAPE in drive!") FileClose(loghand) loghand=0 break Else Delay(Ticks) Endif endwhile return