At 09:48 AM 30/10/2008, Leyne, Sean wrote:

>I would start to suspect that the problem lies with the disk
>drive/subsystem!
>
>The only time I have seen database corruptions, in 20+ years (15 with
>IB/FB), has been the result of:
>
>- Server Abends (abrupt shutdowns), even with Forced Writes = ON

On Linux, if you brought this database forward from an earlier version, try switching FW off, restart server, then switch it on again and restart server.

>- Disk drive/controller failure

Something I encountered in the past couple of days on a new (first ever) installation of XP was that the Promise Ultra TX driver that was installed for WinXP and Server2003 by Service Pack 2 was *very hairy*, a problem that was thoroughly confirmed by Googling the issue. Bad reads, bad writes and corruption are symptomatic. The one that cured the problem on my new setup was the one distributed by Promise Technology itself, v.2.0.0.42, dated 28.03.2003, showing itself as "WinXP Promise Ultra100 TX2 (tm) IDE Controller".

This after using the same controller for years on a Win2K box using the original shipped driver (which I have since lost) with nary a problem. The controller's BIOS version is 2.10 (Build 23).

For my own purposes I wasn't looking for clues about corruption on a Linux setup but I think it's worth a mention, in case (a) you're running your RAID off this controller and (b) your driver was compiled from the same broken code. Check whether you are using this driver and, if so, perhaps Googling it will turn up the same kind of horror stories I got regarding the Microsoft version...

./heLen