Here's my original message:

>Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 15:07:14 -0400
>To: IB-Support@yahoogroups.com
>From: "Ann W. Harrison" <aharrison@...>
>Subject: Can't find tip page
>
>While performing a necropsy on a database recently,
>I ran into a bug which may be of interest to some
>people.
>
>Attempts to attach to the database failed with the
>error "gds internal consistency check, can't find tip."
>Checking the database header showed that the next
>transaction number was 131,596,294 and the page size
>was 1024. As it happens, a 1024 byte page will hold
>4016 transaction states. Dividing the next transaction
>number by 4016 to get the tip page sequence number
>gives 32768.001494. A very interesting number.
>
>There is a bug in InterBase 5.6, 6.01, and the current
>Firebird beta that causes the lookup of a transaction
>inventory page to fail if there are more than 32767
>transaction pages. That makes the maximum safe
>transaction id for a database with:
>
> 1024 byte pages 131,596,287.
> 2048 byte pages 265,814,016.
> 4096 byte pages 534,249,472.
> 8192 byte pages 1,071,120,384.
>
>Although those are large numbers, this particular
>database exceeded 131 million transactions in six
>months.
>
>Suggestions:
> 1) don't use a 1024 byte page size.
> 2) do check your next transaction number from
> time to time.
> 3) if you see the next transaction number
> approaching the limit, backup and restore
> the database.
>
>Gfix won't cure the problem, but it can be cured.

The easiest way to check the next transaction number is
with IBConsole or gstat. Claudio has added a database
info item to return the value in Firebird.


Regards,

Ann
www.ibphoenix.com
We have answers.