> After testing a bit more, I notice that the locked database file has its

>

timestamp updated when firebird.exe does a "FlushBuffersFile" operation,

>

which can occur several minutes after the NBACKUP -L operation.

>
>

Isn't that a bug? Everything should be flushed to file immediately when

>

(before?) the database file is locked, shouldn't it?
  Very interesting, thanks for investigation.

  When engine flushes page cache, it call FlushFileBuffers (on WIndows) for
database file(s), shadow file(s) (if present) and physical backup difference
(delta) file (if database is in stalled or merge mode). Note, database files is
flushed despite of backup state. It was considered as no-op if there was no
writes to the database file. And, of course, in stalled mode there is no writes
to the database file. You may ensure it using same ProcMon tool. But !
FlushFileBuffers could write file metadata also, and it seems we deal with
exactly this case (and yes - it is not exactly no-op, as we see now).

  Now we should decide what to do with it.

Regards,
Vlad