Bizarre maintenance plan failure (db backup)

[nielsonj1976]

I am getting a failure on the db backup job of one of my maintenance
plans. It is coming back with the generic error message of,

"sqlmaint.exe failed. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 22029). The step
failed."

I then checked the Database Maintenance Plan History page, but this
shows all the steps having run successfully. If I check the drives for
the actual backup files, they exist and look healthy too!

There is plenty of space on the drives, so it is not that.

I've checked the NT logs and all they say is,

"SQL Server Scheduled Job 'DB Backup Job for DB Maintenance Plan 'DB
Maintenance Plan for All User Databases''
(0xC06E15E2A9E1414087BE19541D167861) - Status: Failed - Invoked on:
2005-06-29 21:00:04 - Message: The job failed. The Job was invoked by
Schedule 35 (Schedule 1). The last step to run was step 1 (Step 1). "

Which doesn't give me any clues.

Since the backups have actually run to success, I am going to take off
the option on the maintenance plan to "Verfiy the integrity of the
backup upon completion". Maybe it is this that is causing problems,
rather than the backup?

Anyone had anything similar?

[Erland Sommarskog]

(ni**********@yahoo.co.uk) writes:

I am getting a failure on the db backup job of one of my maintenance
plans. It is coming back with the generic error message of,

"sqlmaint.exe failed. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 22029). The step
failed."

I then checked the Database Maintenance Plan History page, but this
shows all the steps having run successfully. If I check the drives for
the actual backup files, they exist and look healthy too!

There is plenty of space on the drives, so it is not that.

I've checked the NT logs and all they say is,

"SQL Server Scheduled Job 'DB Backup Job for DB Maintenance Plan 'DB
Maintenance Plan for All User Databases''
(0xC06E15E2A9E1414087BE19541D167861) - Status: Failed - Invoked on:
2005-06-29 21:00:04 - Message: The job failed. The Job was invoked by
Schedule 35 (Schedule 1). The last step to run was step 1 (Step 1). "

Which doesn't give me any clues.
So did you look at the Job History? Find the backup job, right-click
and select Show History. In this dialog check "Show step details". The
step details usually have some more meat for information.
Since the backups have actually run to success, I am going to take off
the option on the maintenance plan to "Verfiy the integrity of the
backup upon completion". Maybe it is this that is causing problems,
rather than the backup?

Ehum, if the problem is that the backups don't verify, that I would
not like to know that and not sweep it under the carpet.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, es****@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp

[nielsonj1976]

So did you look at the Job History? Find the backup job, right-click
and select Show History. In this dialog check "Show step details". The
step details usually have some more meat for information.
This doesn't really give me any clues either. If I click show step
details, I get it displaying 2 steps,

Step 1: Executed as user: OMNIA\SVC_SQL_Exec. sqlmaint.exe failed.
[SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 22029). The step failed.

Step 0: (Job Outcome) The job failed. The Job was invoked by Schedule
35 (Schedule 1). The last step to run was step 1 (Step 1).

Since the backups have actually run to success, I am going to take off
the option on the maintenance plan to "Verfiy the integrity of the
backup upon completion". Maybe it is this that is causing problems,
rather than the backup?

Ehum, if the problem is that the backups don't verify, that I would
not like to know that and not sweep it under the carpet.

Having checked this morning the backup status is still showing Failed
even with the verify option off. The only reason I thought it *could*
be this is that the backups are fairly large (25gb+) so SQL server
could be having problems verifying with the disk space available?

[Erland Sommarskog]

ni**********@yahoo.co.uk (ni**********@yahoo.co.uk) writes:

This doesn't really give me any clues either. If I click show step
details, I get it displaying 2 steps,

Step 1: Executed as user: OMNIA\SVC_SQL_Exec. sqlmaint.exe failed.
[SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 22029). The step failed.

Step 0: (Job Outcome) The job failed. The Job was invoked by Schedule
35 (Schedule 1). The last step to run was step 1 (Step 1).

I rarely set into maintenance job, so I don't really know where sqlmaint
might write its errors. But looking at the properties of a plan that I've
actually set up, I see that there is a Reporting tab. Have you checked
what's yours, and if that leads to a useful file?

> Since the backups have actually run to success, I am going to take off
> the option on the maintenance plan to "Verfiy the integrity of the
> backup upon completion". Maybe it is this that is causing problems,
> rather than the backup?

Ehum, if the problem is that the backups don't verify, that I would
not like to know that and not sweep it under the carpet.

Having checked this morning the backup status is still showing Failed
even with the verify option off. The only reason I thought it *could*
be this is that the backups are fairly large (25gb+) so SQL server
could be having problems verifying with the disk space available?

I will have to retract what I said above. I recalled a discussion among
my MVP colleagues who are into server administration. The consensus was
that verification of backups as offered by RESTORE VERIFYOLNLY is useless.
The only way to really verify a backup is to restore it. And run DBCC checks
on the restored copy.
--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, es****@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp

[haggul]

Do your maint plans cover more than 1 database? If so check the recovery modes of each - this error seems to pop up if there are mixed modes within 1 plan.