Sorry about not being very verbose. I should know better.

I installed the same server version as the backup like you suggested but the same error as before happened.

gbak: ERROR:unsuccessful metadata update
gbak: ERROR: TABLE UTMP
gbak: ERROR: Can't have relation with only computed fields or constraints
gbak:Exiting before completion due to errors

Other times when doing the restore when I have tested the noon backup I have gotton other errors and I haven't logged them but I will from now on.

I know one other time the error was related to not being able to create an index on a table that did not exist.

I'm not sure what the error is referring to since I don't have a table called UTMP. Not sure if that is a system table or not.

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Helen Borrie <helebor@...> wrote:
>
> At 05:52 AM 12/03/2009, you wrote:
> >I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong but I've been using gbak for years to backup my database nightly and also at noon each day. The backups seems to run correctly but for whatever reason the noon back will not restore without errors.
>
> That's too vague. What errors? Are you verifying and logging these restores? If so, show us the end of the logs of these failed restores.
>
> >I have a fairly heavy load of users on the system at noon time but other than that I don't see why this would not work.
>
> "would not work" isn't offering anything useful. However, gbak didn't suddenly lose its hot backup capability between 1.5 and 2.1.x. Certainly bugs in gbak have shown up and gotten fixed since 2004...and ODS changes naturally impact database structures...but to troubleshoot your problem you need to address the exceptions that are occurring to break your restore.
>
> > I did not have this problem with Firebird 1.5 but recently upgraded everything to Firebird 2.1.1. I did a complete backup and restore to upgrade my database so I now I'm running on the the latest ODS.
> >
> >One other item of note is that the server I'm using to test my backups is a Firebird 2.5 Alpha 1 machine that I use foe dev and testing. Like I said the nightly backup restores just fine every time but the noon backup does not. I wanted to find out if there was an issue with gbak not using a snapshot and perhaps getting corruption since the data is in a changing state. Not sure.
>
> Can't tell....but as a reality check, you really ought to do your test restores under the same server that you backed up on. Field-testing a warty alpha with a higher ODS is one thing; conducting robust QA on the viability of your production databases is quite another.
>
> ./heLen
>