Hello all!

I've just worked on a database that had a very
peculiar problem - a table disappeared and when
you tried to recreate it, the database complained
that the table existed. Close examination showed
that there was a record in rdb$relations that
defined the table, but it was marked as damaged.
In fact, it had a bad back pointer, but the record
was committed, so the back version was not needed.

What appears to have happened is that someone
ran gfix -mend against the database. It found the
bad back pointer and marked the record as damaged.
InterBase 5.6 (which this was) skips over damaged
records. Firebird does too.

The mend option on gfix is dangerous - it can lose
data - sometimes lots of data. Use it *only* if
you've got a corruption that prevents a backup and
restore and when losing some data is preferable to
losing everything.

Immediately after gfix -mend, you should do a backup
and restore. Gfix -mend does not leave the database
in a reliable multi-user state.

We were able to get the table and all its data
back - Paul Beach is a very clever boy - and all is
well.

So, look over your maintenance scripts - if you're
using the -mend switch thinking it will avoid problems,
change it!


Regards,


Ann