backup job never completes

Hello,
I have a small (300mb) db on SQL 7 on NT. We have had a re-occurring problem. A maintenance plan does full back and tran log backup on the one database with no other steps. It works fine for weeks or months at a time. Then the jobs start executing, but ne
ver complete. No errors are written to the NT log, no errors for the job. I just had it write to a text file and it created the file when the scheduled job started, but it is empty. The job says "executing" and has to be manually canceled. Trying to run t
he job manually does the same thing - never completes. I can do manual backups.
The weird thing is, if I re-start the SQL service, both full and trans log backups will work for some arbitrary period of time before the problem comes up again. This has been happening with different service packs up to 6, which is currently installed.
There are many other databases on this server and all other maintenance plans work with no problems. I have deleted jobs and the plan and recreated it to no avail.
Any Ideas?
Please help.
Pete
Could be a problem with your SQL Agent service. When this happened, have you
checked the SQL Server error log and the Agent error log?
HTH,
Vyas, MVP (SQL Server)
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"PeteN" <anonymous@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A9F1C8E4-7EC1-4395-A41C-91F210DBC763@.microsoft.com...
Hello,
I have a small (300mb) db on SQL 7 on NT. We have had a re-occurring
problem. A maintenance plan does full back and tran log backup on the one
database with no other steps. It works fine for weeks or months at a time.
Then the jobs start executing, but never complete. No errors are written to
the NT log, no errors for the job. I just had it write to a text file and it
created the file when the scheduled job started, but it is empty. The job
says "executing" and has to be manually canceled. Trying to run the job
manually does the same thing - never completes. I can do manual backups.
The weird thing is, if I re-start the SQL service, both full and trans log
backups will work for some arbitrary period of time before the problem comes
up again. This has been happening with different service packs up to 6,
which is currently installed.
There are many other databases on this server and all other maintenance
plans work with no problems. I have deleted jobs and the plan and recreated
it to no avail.
Any Ideas?
Please help.
Pete
|||Is the last step an email notification of success or failure? It could be a
stuck MAPI service. That happens fairly often in SQL.
Geoff N. Hiten
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Senior Database Administrator
Careerbuilder.com
I support the Professional Association for SQL Server
www.sqlpass.org
"PeteN" <anonymous@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A9F1C8E4-7EC1-4395-A41C-91F210DBC763@.microsoft.com...
> Hello,
> I have a small (300mb) db on SQL 7 on NT. We have had a re-occurring
problem. A maintenance plan does full back and tran log backup on the one
database with no other steps. It works fine for weeks or months at a time.
Then the jobs start executing, but never complete. No errors are written to
the NT log, no errors for the job. I just had it write to a text file and it
created the file when the scheduled job started, but it is empty. The job
says "executing" and has to be manually canceled. Trying to run the job
manually does the same thing - never completes. I can do manual backups.
> The weird thing is, if I re-start the SQL service, both full and trans log
backups will work for some arbitrary period of time before the problem comes
up again. This has been happening with different service packs up to 6,
which is currently installed.
> There are many other databases on this server and all other maintenance
plans work with no problems. I have deleted jobs and the plan and recreated
it to no avail.
> Any Ideas?
> Please help.
> Pete
>
|||Neither of these logs have error messages from this. I have also tried to stop and re-start the server agent, but that did not help. If I manually start the job, It has the same problem - never completes.
|||There are no steps other than the full and tran backup - and now the write errors to text file , which came up as an empty file. There is no email service running.
|||It seems that there is no answer to this, SO... I went with Andrew's advice posted elswhere on this board and got rid of the maintenance plan and created and scheduled my own backup jobs. So far, all is working good.
Thanks for your help.
Pete