Why is my transaction log full?

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Home » Article Discussions » Article Discussions by Author » Discuss content posted by Gail Shaw » Why is my transaction log full?

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Why is my transaction log full?

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Posted Tuesday, September 04, 2012 9:06 AM

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As you identified, the cause of the log being full is the active backup. The checkDB errors are all a result of the log being full, nothing else.

You need to identify why the backups are running so much longer than usual. Immediate thought - IO subsystem contention.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008, MVP
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
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Post #1353977

Scott D. Jacobson

Posted Tuesday, September 04, 2012 9:13 AM

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Forgot to mention the tlog growth from the start as I was pretty sure that was also an issue. The log file growth was set to 10 % and the free space on the drive was about 10% of the entire drive. Obviously that's an issue. Changed that to 10 MB and am running another backup.

Gail, I think it's a combination of issues. I think they deleted a backup file that was still in progress. Is there any way to stop this backup operation that the sys.databases table thinks is still in progress?

Correction: The backup failed b/c the tlog ran out of space 2 days ago. There is no backup run Sunday night/Monday morning. Then a backup attempted to run this morning with the previous backup showing as still active in sys.databases. Ugh what a mess.

Post #1353982

Scott D. Jacobson

Posted Tuesday, September 04, 2012 9:30 AM

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I guess the question still is:

Is there any way to stop this backup operation that the sys.databases table thinks is still in progress?

A previous job was stopped and a job that followed that failed. It appears that SQL Server thinks the stopped job is still running. I can see no other indication of this other than ACTIVE_BACKUP_OR_RESTORE as the log_wait_reuse_desc in sys.databases. Even the location of the backup files is empty.

Post #1353995

Posted Tuesday, September 04, 2012 10:15 AM

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New thread please. The discussion thread of an article is not the best place for a problem that isn't directly related to the article.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008, MVP
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
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Post #1354025

Posted Thursday, November 22, 2012 6:35 AM

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Hi Gail,

Can I please ask a quick question. In your article you say the following:

Log backup

The log backup wait reason will never appear in Simple Recovery.

Now I do agree this is a valid statement, however:

SELECT  database_id,
	recovery_model_desc,
	log_reuse_wait_desc
FROM    sys.databases
WHERE	log_reuse_wait_desc <> 'NOTHING'

database_id recovery_model_desc log_reuse_wait_desc
46 SIMPLE LOG_BACKUP

Why would I be seeing this?

Thanks

http://thesqlguy.blogspot.com/

Post #1387871

Posted Thursday, November 22, 2012 11:23 AM

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Has the DB just been switched from full or bulk-logged recovery? If so, run a checkpoint, sys.databases is not updated immediately, hence you can get 'log backup' occurring for a very short period after the DB has been switched to simple recovery model.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008, MVP
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
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Post #1387957

Posted Thursday, November 22, 2012 1:07 PM

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Artoo22 (11/22/2012)

Log backup

The log backup wait reason will never appear in Simple Recovery.

Now I do agree this is a valid statement, however:

Actually, that's not an accurate statement. This column records the reason the log file could not be truncated the last time it tried to do so. In simple recovery model, this means that it gets updated, if there is a reason, when a checkpoint occurs.

For example:

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Post #1387977

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