FMS Famous Purple Hand!

Hello all,

long time reader, first time poster, and all that...

We've got the usual SIMS/SQL setup here, but recently have been having problems with FMS... at the worst time of year for FMS problems of course!

The problem is quite simple. The 'SQL Anywhere - SIMS_SQL_DB_SERVER' Service is stopped when we get in, in the morning. From the looks of it, it failed to be restarted by the backup program when the backup finished.

If you try and restart the service, either through the GUI, or through the services console, you get a number of errors in the event log -

1. An engine with that name has already started
2. Service not able to access Desktop
3. Could not start server

On friday we simply restarted the server, which fixed thr problem.. but obviously this can't be the best solution.

This morning we noticed that a service called 'network DDE' was stopped (for some reason), and restarting this service allowed us to restart the SQL Server service.

Any ideas? Anyone seen this before?

Regards

Adam Short
Assistant Network Manager
John Cleveland College
Leicestershire

<waves at adam from across the other side of the county>

Hi Adam stupid question how is backup script stopping the sql services etc and in what order..

cheers

Russ

Have you considered you might have a virus. I know there are some that close down the SQL server

Haven't considered a virus, but will double double check the antivirus to make sure it's clean...

Here is the order of service stop/starts in the script:

start /wait net stop "Removable Storage"
start /wait net start "Removable Storage"
start /wait net stop "SQL Anywhere - SIMS_SQL_DB_Server"
start /wait net start "SQL Anywhere - SIMS_SQL_DB_Server"

any use?

Adam

We get the purple hand from time to time as well. Sometimes I find that rights to temporary files on the local machine have gone awry (PDOUSER or sometihing and the SIMS folders - not at work now). Other times I've no idea - but then it starts working again - if you find a "proper" fix - I'd love to know.

Had exact same problem Adam but can't remember fix right now. Sure we fixed it by re-jigging the backup routine tho'. Do you have centralised sims support there?
if you stll have the problem when i check back i'll look it up.

we do have SIMS support with our LEA, or LA, or whatever they are now...

The only problem with that is, they recently lost their most experienced techy... he now sit's in the same office as me, he moved here to be the network manager, and he doesn't know how to fix it either...

Any re-jigging advice would be grately apprieciated.

Cheers

Just a thouht but is he sql any service being started during backup?

Why do you have to stop the sql service anyway out of sheer curiosity

Quote:

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Originally Posted by apeo

Just a thouht but is he sql any service being started during backup?

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Good point, could be that the backup is taking longer than the gap between the service stoping and restarting.

Sorry, bit of an error in my first post I've realised...

The script that runs before the backup re-starts the sql anywhere service, so as to release the db file (incase some users crashed out at the end of the day), hence the stop/start lines in the script... the stop/start for the backup service refreshes the backup servic so that it recognises there's a new tape in the media library.

Does that help?

cheers

Silly me... forgetting to log in! /\

Ok, possibly I'm missing the point, but can't you stop the sql service, run the backup, then restart the sql service?