Re: Using findstr on SQL 2005 ERRORLOG file

On Feb 28, 5:33=A0pm, Erland Sommarskog wrote:
> Teresa Masino (teresa.mas...@peninsula.org) writes:
> > We have set up a couple of SQL Server 2005 systems and I have found
> > that the format of the ERRORLOG files and the SQL Agent's log files
> > are Unicode or some format that findstr cannot parse properly. =A0"find"=

> > parses them fine, but it doesn't have the capabilities that I need --
> > specifically, I can't search for multiple strings in one search.
>
> > I see the checkbox on the SQL Agent's for "Write OEM File", but it is
> > grayed out so I am not able to try checking that. =A0I also don't know
> > if that would affect the server's ERRORLOG file too or just the
> > Agent's log file.
>
> > So what am I missing? =A0What is everyone else doing who is used to
> > having scripts to parse these files looking for strings that indicate
> > problems? =A0Is there a server setting that will force it to go back to
> > a plain ANSI text file format for log files? =A0Is that a bad thing to
> > do?
>
> I doubt there is a setting to force the SQL Server error log to be ANSI.
> Would be a lot problem to log object and database names with characters
> outside the ANSI set in that case.
>
> I guess the answer is to use Unicode-capable tools. I don't have any
> real suggestion for that. I search the errorlog fairly rarely, so most
> of the time I'm content of opening it in Textpad. (Which understands
> Unicode in so far it can handle the encoding, but it's not able to
> work with characters outside the ANSI range.)
>
> --
> Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esq...@sommarskog.se
>
> Books Online for SQL Server 2005 athttp://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodte=
chnol/sql/2005/downloads/books...
> Books Online for SQL Server 2000 athttp://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/p=
reviousversions/books.mspx- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

=46rom a batch job the TYPE command will convert unicode to ASCII. i.e.

TYPE \\SQLSRVR1\E$\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\LOG\ERRORLOG > \\SQLSRVR1\C$\ERRORLOG
\ErrorLog.txt