Jason,

> > When trying to backup the database with either the Services API
> > or gbak.exe, the backup stops at a given point with:
> >
> > gbak: 4 records written
> > gbak: writing index RDB$PRIMARY4
> > gbak: writing data for table SEMESTER
> > gbak: 4000 records written
> > gbak: writing index RDB$PRIMARY101
> > gbak: writing index RDB$FOREIGN102
> > gbak: writing index RDB$FOREIGN103
> > gbak: writing data for table HASPHOTO
> > gbak: 586 records written
> > gbak: writing index RDB$PRIMARY3
> > gbak: writing data for table PHOTOS
> > gbak: ERROR: message length error (encountered 548, expected 544)
> > gbak: ERROR: gds_$receive failed
> > gbak: Exiting before completion due to errors
> >
> > Does somebody know what can cause the above "message length error"
> > message? Even Google doesn't seem to be helpful ;-).
> I've probably encountered it, but like lots of error messages, I just read
> that the DB is corrupt.
>
> > I've tried various repair tasks (including the IBPhoenix paper)
> > without success. The data is accessible and the database is very
> > small (~ 3,6 MB), therefore recreating a new database and pumping
> > the data might be not a problem here, though I would be interested
> > in avoiding the above in the future.
> When you do a gfix, what does it report?

Nothing. As I've said, I went through the IBPhoenix paper without
success. I've suggested my co-worker to recreate the database and
pump the data into the new one. This was fearly easy, because it
was a small database. And another suggestion was not to blindly use
features offered in third-party tools, which are based on direct
system table updates instead of Firebird compliant DDL statements.
;-)


Regards,
Thomas Steinmaurer
http://www.iblogmanager.com