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aiken
Aged Yak Warrior
525 Posts |
 Posted - 2002-07-15 : 13:26:40
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| This is a followup to an earlier thread: http://www.sqlteam.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=15786...I will apologize for going off a bit on MS tech support, but my experience really hasn't been very good with them. I have an issue opened with them now, but we're not making much progress because at this point it takes 7-10 days for the problem to manifest itself. So far, they've had me install SP2 (didn't fix it), install the three latest patches (one per call = one per week), which seemed unlikely, given that they were security patches, and add/remove the system from its domain.At this point, I've got a fully patched SP2 SQL server running on NT 4 that's exhbiting the same problems; gradually decreasing uptime before failing with "could not create process_loginread thread" errors in the log.MS support is now reccomending that we move to Win2K, and our hardware guy is putting together a box and hoping to make the switch towards the end of the month... but I'm not convinced that will do the job. It's a change we need to make anyway, so I'm not all that irked, but it really feels like shooting in the dark to me.As for being argumentative -- I think my problem may be the reverse. I worked tech support for 5 years, so I have quite a bit of sympathy and probably let myself be brushed off with "install the latest patch" too easily.Anyways, in answer to some of the questions in the previous thread:- Yes, we are using sp_OA features. Unfortunately, they're fairly integral to the app, so we can't disable them for troubleshooting purposes. The object we're instantiating is CDONTS for purposes of sending SMTP mail. I am hoping to move to SQL Notification Services when it's released, but can't until then (we're on the beta). - The machine has 1GB of phsyical memory. The SQL memory settings are set to "Dynamically configure", with 0MB min and 1023MB max.- We have no DMO code anywhere.- So far, I haven't found any perfmon counters that indicate impending crashes; private bytes, virtual bytes, handle count, thread count, etc... all seem stable for the OS in general, and both SQL Server and SQL Server Agent.- The uptime does seem to be on an asymptotic curve heading for about 4 days, which isn't as bad as the original curve looked like, but it's still pretty bad. I can predict crashes to within an hour based on the existing curve. Cheers-b |
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chadmat
The Chadinator
1974 Posts |
Posted - 2002-07-15 : 18:21:17
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| Seeing that the problem takes a week+ to reoccur, that unfortunately makes it difficult to troubleshoot.I would hope that you could understand that the problem needs to be reproduceable in order to fix it, otherwise you are right, it is just a shot in the dark.Please don't get frustrated with the support team, they cannot make the problem reoccur more frequently, they can only try something, and if it doesn't work, then you have to wait another 7-10 days to try something else.The problem will get resolved. You just have to be patient with this type of case.Just curious, do you have a SQL Suport Engineer, or an OS one?-Chad |
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shsmonteiro
Constraint Violating Yak Guru
290 Posts |
Posted - 2002-07-15 : 20:34:20
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| There is some memory Dump generated by SQL, when this message accurs? if not can you issue a dbcc sqldmp, and check this dump so you can see exactly what process is in memory when the problem occurs?I hope it can help..About MS Support, they have good will and know a lot of things, but sometime the limit is found and they must wait for lab research. I know it because here at My Work we have the same problem, and I Work on support at Big Blue.Sérgio Monteiro -Brazil |
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aiken
Aged Yak Warrior
525 Posts |
Posted - 2002-07-15 : 21:14:15
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| We're got a SQL Engineer. I definitely sympathize with the difficulty in troubleshooting problems that take this long to occur. My complaint, to the extent I have one, is that I feel like I'm getting "Generic troubleshooting checklist #1" answers, just weeks apart.Unfortunately, when the problem happens the server goes from "totally happy" to "totally dead"; SQL is still listening on port 1433, but that's it. It's not acepting commands or running existing SQL Agent jobs (as evidenced by the times on those jobs after rebooting, as well as the contents of tables the jobs touch). SQL does at least shut down properly, though it does take a while. Thanks for the advice.Cheers-b |
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shsmonteiro
Constraint Violating Yak Guru
290 Posts |
Posted - 2002-07-15 : 23:49:22
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| Just checking, (because as I see you tried anything)You tried to rename de SQLImage.dll and DBGHelp.dll in \binn of SQL Installation, and replace imghelp.dll and dbghelp.dll in the System32 subdir with the ones from the Windows 2000 CD?Sérgio MonteiroEdited by - shsmonteiro on 07/15/2002 23:54:26 |
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Hard crashes, continuing...