One other thing that really made me sit up and take notice while I was trying to solve this problem was something that I always used to advocate that my colleagues did every so often but I had not done for myself for some time:
One of the tests that I used to try and see what was happening was to examine the output file from my backup command. It looked fine but - eventually - I thought that I had better try restoring it just to be 100% sure that it gave back all the data I believed that it had saved. To be on the safe side <g> I restored to a different directory rather than replacing the live data and, right at the end, got an error message about an invalid rule. The message didn't tell me which rule so I edited the backup file and set echo on just before the rules section and then restored again. The message followed the rogue rule so I could go back to the original data and correct it. The point is that - somehow - and it was a new rule added in the last few weeks - I had a rule that not only was not going to work but R:Base had accepted. Reload worked with no errors, backup from the R:> prompt (where I was connected normally!) worked with no errors, autochk showed no errors, and I had no reason to believe that everything was not fine. However, the reason why there was an error was my fault: I had changed the alias name of a column in a view that was used in the rule and not corrected the rule afterwards. I always told my colleagues, and did it myself with company data on a weekly basis, that backing up and restoring their data regularly not only safeguarded the data but often showed up errors before they became problems. Now I know that I'm the only one who hasn't restored his data for a while but... Regards, Alastair. ---------------------------------- A D B Burr, St. Albans, UK. ---------------------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------- ================================================ TO SEE MESSAGE POSTING GUIDELINES: Send a plain text email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the message body, put just two words: INTRO rbase-l ================================================ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the message body, put just two words: UNSUBSCRIBE rbase-l ================================================ TO SEARCH ARCHIVES: http://www.mail-archive.com/rbase-l%40sonetmail.com/
