Hello there,
As a fairly new DBA (I’ve come from the development world), I’ve been asked to look at a replication issue that existed well before I arrived on the scene. The error manifests itself in the SQL log and I’ve reviewed this by use of the following:
use distribution
SELECT TOP 5 *
FROM msdb.dbo.sysreplicationalerts
WHERE alert_error_text like 'Replication-Replication Distribution Subsystem: agent (null) failed%'
ORDER BY time desc
The error text returned is: Replication-Replication Distribution Subsystem: agent (null) failed. The publication 'DataRepository' does not exist.
The error reported does seem to be the case. It appears that the publication is null, the AgentID is 0, which doesn’t relate to an agent in MSdistribution_agents. Also, the database named in the PublisherDB column doesn’t exist any more.
I’ve looked to see if the database is mentioned anywhere in the distribution database, but to no avail.
What else should I try to find this ‘ghost’ in the replication?