Scheduling Robocopy
You can use the Windows NT AT command, or the Resource Kit SOON command, with the
Windows NT Schedule Service to create Robocopy jobs that run regularly in the background,
to automatically maintain local mirrors of remote directory trees.
By default the Schedule Service logs on as the System Account for the local system, which
has no network access. Scheduled jobs run in the same context as the Schedule Service. So,
in order to successfully schedule a Robocopy job, some extra configuration is required. There
are basically two options :
Option 1) Leave the Schedule Service running in the context of the local System Account,
and schedule batch files of the following form :
NET USE \\remoteserver\IPC$ /USER:userid password ROBOCOPY \\remoteserver\sourcepath \\localserver\destpath ... NET USE \\remoteserver\IPC$ /DELWithin each such job, credentials with remote servers are established by connecting to the
IPC$ (Inter Process Communication) share on remote machines using an appropriate user
account, rather than as the local System account. The disadvantage of this approach is that
user passwords are stored in the batch files, but they can be protected by storing the batch
files on an NTFS partition, and applying appropriate NTFS file security to the batch files.
Option 2) In Control Panel/Services/Schedule Service/Startup configure the Schedule
Service to use a "real" user account that you have created in User Manager, by specifying an
appropriate User Id and Password in the "Log On As" section. Then you should Stop and
Start the Schedule Service to get it running in the new user context. Once the nominated
user has been granted appropriate access to source and destination servers, you can now
schedule Robocopy jobs to copy files between them.
Finally, as drive mappings can be changed by users, it is generally best to use UNC names
for source and destination directories in scheduled Robocopy jobs, as these explicity specify
file locations, and are more reliable. I.e. rather than scheduling a command of the form :
ROBOCOPY X:\source Y:\dest ...for increased reliability, you should use commands of the form :
ROBOCOPY \\server1\share1\source \\server2\share2\dest ...AT and the Schedule Service are documented in the Windows NT Commands on-line help.
SOON is documented in the Windows NT Resource Kit on-line documentation.