Hi heLen

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Helen Borrie <helebor@t...>
wrote:

> Couldn't you just have the daemon add a record to a text file when

the gbak

> either completes or abends? You can declare this file inside the

database

> as an EXTERNAL FILE - that can be queried by the clients via the

database,

> without need for any share.
>
> heLen

Thats a good idea, but that will only work if gbak is running on the
same PC as Firebird.

We have around 110 sites running our Dental App on every thing from
one Win98 up to 25 clients + 1-2 Win2000 server.

Backup may been one of these:

1) Database on server, gbak to file on server, copy to tape on server
2) Database on server, gbak to file on client, copy to tape on
client.
3) Database on client A, gbak to file on client B, copy to Zip on
client B
4) Database on server, gbak to CD-Rom (inCD) on client.
5) Database on server, gbak to server, ftp to remote server.
6) + Every other combination the human mind can thing of.

Now I know one thing! gbak is always needed in order to create the
backup, therefore gbak.exe is where I have to focus. I cannot
contact every site and create a bat-file. Because 1) It takes too
long and 2) If one of our customers change there backup from fx.
tape to CD I will not always get notified about the change.

What I can do, is to modify gbak durring an update (customer is
running setup.exe from CD/FTP which includes Firebird auto update
(ready for FB1.5))

What is almost working is:

1) rename bin/gbak.exe to bin/realgbak.exe
2) copy my own gbak.exe to bin/

Where my own gbak.exe is a console app that does:
1) connect to firebird.
3) insert into backuplog values('now','BEGIN')
4) run realgbak.exe
5) on error insert into backuplog values('now','ERROR')
6) on success insert into backuplog values('now','SUCCESS')
7) Disconnect from firebird

One thing that I dont like, is that DB managers calling gbak cannot
redirect output and when running from cmd/prompt another console
window pops up.

Maybe NBackup/Firebird 2.0 will have a function like that. One can
only wish ;-)

Brian