Create and download a SDM System Dump from PLC via script / batch file

[alexander.hefner]

Hi all,

here’s a little helper batch script I created some time ago for retrieving a system dump from the PLC automatically. Maybe someone out there has similar needs and can utilize it, therefore I’m sharing it in our Community.

What is it good for?

As you all know, the SDM has the possibility to create a system dump that contains information about the hardware, software and data files like logger modules (if configured).

Most often, the system dump is created and downloaded by a user operating the SDM.
But under certain conditions it could be helpful to automate this process, for example if using CI / CD mechanisms or automated testing.
But it could also be useful before delivering a machine or while processing FAT/SAT:
as a system dump contains many informations in a machine readable format (XML) about hardware and software installed in the PLC, those informations can even be used as part of the manufacturers internal documentation about the delivery conditions of a machine.

How it works

The batch file uses “curl” for the web requests and “tar” for a simple check of the downloaded module. For both commands, I used the Windows 11 integrated executables to avoid neccessary additional installations (I’m not aware if both were already integrated in former versions of Windows, but I don’t think so).

Usage

You have to provide the following four parameters to the batch file:

• 1.) the root URL of the PLC
  • including http:// or https://
• 2.) the name of the system dump file and where to store
  • the file extension .tar.gr has to be provided also
• 3.) wether the system dump should contain data files or not
  • this parameter is the counterpart to the following selection when operating SDM as user
    
• 4.) if you want to do a basic check or not
  • the basic check just tries to access data from the tar.gz archive by using the tar command - if tar fails, most probably the downloaded data is invalid (for example because of the URL is pointing to a webserver but not to a PLC)

Download content

The attached zip contains the batch file and a 30s short video.
Here’s a short picture out of this video showing the usage:

And here’s the zip:

LoadSysDump.zip (1.8 MB)

[kovarj (Jaroslav Kovar)]

Thanks Alexander, there have already been a couple of topics in the past with questions about how to get a system dump from a PLC. So now we can share a link to your tool. I added toolkit to the topic for quick access.