We are currently in the process of integrating TNG with our helpdesk system.  I understand that we are using an echo facility to export data to text files on our Win2k server.  I have searched in vain to find information about how this is done.  I am intersted to know what limits there are regarding command lengths.  If this just running a dos/windows echo command or is this a facility within TNG?

It'll probably be from within TNG.
On the CA server type: caugui msgaction
Choose - View - Sort by -Text, and you should see some commands that are doing "echo blah blah blah".
It's just running the NT echo command from within CA, and as such has the same limitations as it would if you ran it from the command line or batch file.
You can also only have 254 chars in the text field of a message action.

Hi,
I've a lot of ECHOs in my msgaction on TNG2.4.
You will see a limitation if you try to open the same file (in case your ECHO inside a ASCII file).
In my scenario, I send all my NT/W2K Security Logs to the Central TNG server where they are appended whit ECHO commands to a text file. Whenever a process access the file to append, if another proccess try to access at the same time, you will see that the file get its contents erased.
This will not happend if you have your Event Management server under Unix.

luck

Américo Alonso
Certified Unicenter Engineer
Sonda Uruguay S.A.
Tel./Fax: +598 2 917-0631
www.sonda.com.uy
americo.alonso@sonda.com.uy

you know it's a bit interesting, We've also used the echo command in order to write to a text file but we also noticed a problem with it as well.  When ever two or more messages come in within a few thousandths of a second of eachother they both spark off the echo command and then they are both open at the same time but when one operation completes, it had no prior knowledge of the other.  This ended up with lost lines and sometimes even the entire file started over with the new line since it didn't find the open file.

Not to say that this isn't avoidable but you may want to be aware of the drawbacks to relying on the OS to append a file.

Martin

If the sky is blue and the Sun is yellow....  Why isn't the air Green?