At 02:03 PM 17/01/2006 +0000, you wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Please help me with my backup problem. I have a Database with a 92.2MB
>file size and I want to backup it but unfornately the process was
>terminated with an error message:
>
>"Unsuccessful execution caused by system error that does not preclude
>successful execution of subsequent statements. message length error
>(encountered 172, expected 168) gds_$receive failed."
>
>I'm using the following:
> 1. IBExpert Backup service
> 2. Firebird 1.5
> 3. RedHat Linux 9 for the database server
> 4. Windows XP as the client
>
>NOTE:I'm running the backup process at the client station (Windows XP).
>And the database is still usable and accessible only that I can't
>succesfully perform a backup.

The exception message means that some exception occurred in the request to
the Services API and that the message buffer for some exception in the
chain has a 4-byte overflow. That would be one to put to the IBExpert
developers, I think. It might be a known bug in a particular version of
IBExpert.

As to *what* the exceptional condition was, that the server objected to,
you could consider the following:

1. Did remote backup using IBExpert ever work with this configuration, or
is this a new problem?
a) Is the remote server running Classic or Superserver?
b) Are you sure that IBExpert on that client station is accessing the
correct client library? Older clients can't access the Services API on a
Classic server.

2. Are you supplying the valid SYSDBA or DB Owner username and password?
(They are the only users permitted to request backups...)

3. What is the path that you are supplying for the database and backup
file filespecs? If they look like a Windows file path or a WNET access
path then it won't work on Linux.

a) For the DB file path, it would have to be resolved as E.g.

/data/dirname/MyDB.fdb

b) For the backup file, it would have to be resolved as E.g.

/home/olan/backups/MyDB.fbk

4. Remember that all names in the filesystem on Linux are case-sensitive.

5. Don't overlook the possibility that the 'firebird' user on the server
doesn't have the right filesystem privileges to the location where the
backup file is. You'll need to pre-create the directory and give the
firebird user rwx privileges to the directory.

6. The request will also fail if a file in the destination directory
already has the same name as the name that you specify for the backup file.

As a reality check, you might like to attempt the remote service_mgr backup
yourself, using gbak from the command line on that workstation. From the
$firebird_root\bin folder on the workstation, using the examples above
(watch wrap, this is all one command; replace remoteserver with the node
name of the Linux host machine):

gbak -b -se remoteserver:service_mgr /data/dirname/MyDB.fdb
/home/olan/backups/MyDB.fbk -u SYSDBA -pas xyzabc44

./heLen