At 05:18 PM 5/12/2007, you wrote:

>We produce an accounting system and converted our system across to
>Firebird 1.54 from Interbase 5.6. We have found that at some sites on
>an irregular basis we get the following error in the firebird event log.
>
>SERVERX (Client) Thu Nov 08 17:00:50 2007
> C:\Program Files\Firebird\Firebird_1_5\bin\fbserver.exe: terminated
>abnormally (4294967295)

Unfortunately that numeric code comes from Windows and, as far as we can tell, it indicates exactly what you picked up in the win event log, i.e., it means nothing.

>In the windows event log the following messages appear:
>The description for Event ID ( 281 ) in Source (
>FirebirdGuardianDefaultInstance ) cannot be found. The local computer
>may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files
>to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the
>/AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support
>for details. The following information is part of the event: Abnormal
>Termination: C:\Program Files\Firebird\Firebird_1_5\bin\fbserver.exe:
>terminated abnormally (4294967295).

All this means is that the Guardian service was installed without anything in the "comment" field of the service, which is optional text for services whose purpose isn't clear from their name. This message is not a cause, it is an effect.

The Guardian service's job is just to sit there waiting, in case the Firebird server crashes, at which it will attempt to restart it. So the firebird.log messages before and after it are more interesting in the quest for reasons for the server crash.

>The servers on which Firebird run are dedicated IBM Windows 2003
>Servers, configured with RAID 5, 3.x ghz processor with typically 4
>Gig of Memmory installed. The method of connection to the database is
>by the BDE

If you're getting site-specific crashes then the BDE is almost certainly at the bottom of the problem. Even the most recent BDE (5.2) is terribly ancient: it predates Fb 1.5 and doesn't even fully support IB 6. So - if this crashing problem is more than just an occasional annoyance, copy the BDE configuration from one of the good sites and see whether that improves anything.

OTOH, it could be that this one site is using some byway of your application that other sites don't use, so don't eliminate that possibility.

>which we are getting ready to replace and we have a number
>of applications that access the database. This is our application
>suite (comprised of many seperate programs such as Debtors, Creditors
>etc) not 3rd party utilities or db tools etc.
>
>The firebird debug version of firebird has been installed at one of
>the sites (Firebird-1.5.4.4910-0-Win32_pdb.exe) and a Crash Dump file
>has been generated for one of the abnormal terminations. This file
>can be made available if it is of use.
>
>Does anyone know what may cause this sort of problem. From the
>message I infer it comes from our client application but what sort of
>operation would induce this error? Although this may not be directly
>relevant this did not occur under Interbase 5.6.

It's not directly relevant that it didn't occur in IB 5.6, except that it does suggest there is something in your migration that was missed for this site. Have you tried to back up the database in IB 5.6 and restore it in Fb 1.5, for example? Do you perhaps have a generator in this database that is overflowing the ODS 9 limit? (In Fb 1.5, generators are BigInt whereas in IB 5.x they are integer...) i.e. there could be many things at play here. You might like to review the IB 6 Migration Guide for some issues you might have overlooked.

>Regards
>Aldous

p.s. Is Aldous Huxley your real name?