An unfortunate Domino 6.0.1 experience leads to a question about Fixup, Compact and “consistency check”. Comments are appreciated…
Using Administrator 6.0.1, connected to Domino 6.0.1, an admin tried to use the Move control to move a database file to a folder on the same server. Instead, this seems to have INSTANTLY crashed Domino – it just vanished from the server! (If it wasn’t this Admin operation, it was a HUGE coincidence with another unknown cause.)
Domino was restarted, revealing that the crash damaged many user mail files. Oddly, it seems to have damaged some mail files that users say were not open. And it definitely damaged mail files that were not explicitly being written-to at the time. Why such files were damaged is unknown.
In most cases, users (all running Notes 5) could not open their mail files, and got error such as invalid file structure, corrupt database, etc. Fixup and Compact were run on the damaged files with various options tried, but users still couldn’t open mail files.
We discovered two cures:
In some cases, opening a mail file with Admin 6 (rather than the users’ Notes 5) would succeed, and thereafter the mail file again worked for users too.
In a few cases, this didn’t work. But some mail files started to work again on their own. Watching the Console, we spotted the “fix”. When a message arrived for a corrupted mail file, Domino would report errors (document has invalid structure, deleting doc, etc.). Then it would launch the “consistency check” process on the mail file. Once this finished, the message was delivered, and the user could access the file.
Since Fixup and Compact didn’t provide relief, the admin resorted to sending an e-mail to any user who reported a problem; this triggered a consistency check on that mail file and all was well.
Which raises the question, how does a “consistency check” differ from what Fixup and Compact do, and how can it be triggered from Administrator or the Console so the “send a message” trick isn’t needed?
Anyone seen this? Have a better explanation?
– John