distribution cleanup cannot clean up snapshot folder

We are using SQL Server 2005 SP2 to do transactional replication.

We and have a separate service account for the SQL Agents (sqladmin) vs. SQL Replication Agents (sqlrepadmin). It is my understanding this is a replication security best practice. The sqlrepadmin has full permissions on the snapshot share folder and it's subdirectories. The sqladmin account does not have permissions at all.

I have been getting an error message when we run the distribution clean up job.

Executed as user: PROD\sqladmin. Could not remove directory '\\Tes01box\Repldata\unc\qabox01_DB01_TO_ORACLE\20070905104896\'. Check the security context of xp_cmdshell

I have dropped the publication and recreated which is what appears to have caused the error.

From

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151151.aspx

Note:

If a publication is dropped, replication attempts to remove the snapshot folder under the security context of the SQL Server service account. If this account does not have sufficient privileges, log in with an account that does have sufficient privileges and remove the folder manually. Removing a folder requires the Modify privilege if the folder is a local path or the Full Control privilege if the folder is a network path.

The note above implies that the SQL Server service account (sqladmin) needs permissions on the snapshot folder as well.

Finally my questions:

Is there a workaround that will allow the distribution cleanup job to run as sqlrepadmin and perform the delete?

If both sqlrepadmin and sqladmin need permissions to the snapshot what is the reasoning from a security perspective of separating them out?

open up your distribution clean up task job, and in the job step properties do the following:

setuser 'sqlrepadmin'
GO
EXEC dbo.sp_MSdistribution_cleanup @.min_distretention = 0, @.max_distretention = 72
GO|||

I did have to qualify the domain, as in DOMAIN\sqlrepadmin to get it to work. We have same login for 2 different domains.

What an amazingly simple and elegant solution. I feel silly that I did not think of this.

Thank you Hilary.