At 07:53 PM 14/08/2006, you wrote:

>I am unsure of the significance of the -g switch on
>a restore. If the backup was run with garbage collection on , what
>garbage is there for the restore process to tidy up?

It's simply a non-issue for the restore. Gbak doesn't back up
garbage. What it does do for the database, by accessing every table
(by default, unless you switch it off using the -g switch), is kick
off garbage collection of all tables.

>The restore completes successfully on an apparently identical win2003
>server using the same backup file, but on our live server Fbserver
>apprears to be doing nothing (for serveral hours) and cannot be
>stopped

If the live server is accumulating tonnes of garbage that's not being
cleaned out any other way, then it's to be expected.

If you plan to restore the database anyway, use the -g switch. It's
pointless garbage-collecting on a database that you are about to
delete. Just don't do anything silly like using your restore to
overwrite your database....

./heLen