Hi Ryan,

>My understanding is that gbak does a sweep while doing a backup, which happens nightly, so sweep should be happening then (if I understand it correctly that is). 

You are wrong. Gbak does not do sweep, it runs snapshot transaction and reads all records in all tables - and, with some conditions, it can clear some garbage versions.

Restart should fix oldest active stuck - if it's a real restart (Classic processes sometimes remain active). Did you check that all processes are down? Or did you restart hardware?

And it also could be another problem, more complex... I can't say more without detailed investigation.

Regards,
Alexey Kovyazin
www.ibsurgeon.com

 

This is Classic, so yes, automatic sweep is disabled.  My understanding is that gbak does a sweep while doing a backup, which happens nightly, so sweep should be happening then (if I understand it correctly that is).  Also, running a manual sweep hangs indefinitely.

As for the active transaction, restarting Firebird doesn't fix the problem.  The ONLY thing that fixes the problem is restoring from a backup file to create a fresh file.  According to Sinatica, there are no active transactions while the problem is being exhibited.  I will check the raw MON tables, but would restarting the Firebird service not terminate any active transactions?

Thanks for all the quick responses!

Ryan