Maintenance Plan Wizard generates invalid script?
The master.dbo.xp_delete_file procedure appears to be undocumented and it also seems to be a binary procedure (sp_helptext 'master.dbo.xp_delete_file' prints xpstar.dll) so we can't figure out arguments from source code. Unofficial sources suggest these are its arguments:
- File Type = 0 for backup files or 1 for report files.
- Folder Path = The folder to delete files. The path must end with a backslash "\".
- File Extension = This could be 'BAK' or 'TRN' or whatever you normally use.
- Date = The cutoff date for what files need to be deleted.
- Subfolder = 0 to ignore subfolders, 1 to delete files in subfolders.
In other words, command is missing the actual path to remove. If we go to "Management/ Mainteinance Plans", right click on our plan and select "Modify" we can edit the individual tasks. In this case, the "Maintenance Cleanup Task" was missing the path (the wizard does not seem to validate whether you enter one). It should look like this:
