I finally tracked this down to hyperthreading. Since I
could not disable hyperthreading, I switched to the
Classic version of Firebird - expensive on resources,
but it works.
Setting the "affinity" on Linux seems to have no
effect on which "CPU" Firebird runs - it seems to
ping-pong from CPU to CPU.
Note: I believe not all RedHat Linux versions support
hyperthreading - to check if your OS/CPU is
hyperthreaded , run the "top" program . If it shows 2
CPUs you have a hyperthreaded (or SMP) machine.

Helen, thank you for the response - it is greatly
appreciated.

--- Helen Borrie <helebor@...> wrote:

> At 12:28 AM 20/09/2005 +0000, you wrote:
> >I am having severe problems with Firebird on RedHat
> Linux. Here are
> >the steps I followed:
> >
> > I first installed
> "FirebirdSS-1.5.2.4731-0.i686.rpm". Using this, my
> >application (which runs on multiple boxes and uses
> the JDBC driver)
> >runs for about 18-24 hours, after which Firebird
> hangs. Everything
> >hangs, including isql, which times out after a long
> time during the
> >connect with the error:
> >
> >Statement failed, SQLCODE = -902
> >Unable to complete network request to host
> "localhost".
> >-Failed to establish a connection.
> >
> > I then tried the NPTL version
> "FirebirdSS-1.5.2.4731-nptl.i686.rpm",
> >since I read posts that indicated this would fix
> the problem.
> >However, this made the problem even worse - my
> application hangs in
> >the first 15 minutes with the same symptoms.
> >
> > I am using RedHat with the 2.6 Kernel (I believe
> this uses NPTL).
> >The output of cat/proc on my system yields:
> >
> >Linux version 2.6.8.1 (root@linux745) (gcc version
> 3.2.3 20030502
> >(Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-24)) #16 SMP Fri Sep 10
> 12:57:04 EDT 2004
> >
> > Are there any logs that I can look at which
> will help locate the
> >problem? I am wondering if building Firebird from
> the sources on the
> >same hardware that it runs on will help - how can I
> build a new RPM
> >from scratch? (I am a Linux newbie)..
>
> Look in firebird.log to see whether you have any
> network problems being
> reported there. It looks as if something is
> crashing the server and
> Guardian can't get it to come up again. "Something"
> might be anything,
> e.g. hyperthreading active, or the processor
> affinity (CPUAffinityMask in
> firebird.conf) having been set to something other
> than 1; or long-running
> transactions that simply exhaust system resources;
> or a rogue UDF that is
> crashing the server; or more connections than the
> host machine has
> resources to handle; or leaking connections from
> wrong cleanup by your
> applications; or a cron job that is trying to do a
> file-level backup on an
> active database file; or ...(how long is a piece of
> string?)
>
> Make sure that the database file is located on a
> hard disk that is
> physically attached to the host machine, i.e. not
> accessed on a different
> box through Samba, NFS, NIS, etc.
>
> If you don't get a solution from this list, try
> posting a question to the
> firebird-java list. Make sure you provide all the
> ennvironment details,
> including the exact version of Jaybird you are using
> for the client --
> including OS platform -- and how your application
> code is handling
> attachments and detachments.
>
> ./heLen
>
>
>
>
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