FAQ

How to rebuild master database?

Different edition of SQL Servers have different ways to rebuild the master database. For SQL Server 2000, in the installation directory, there is a program named rebuildm.exe,(If you can't find it, you have to find it on MS website) you start this program and follow it's instructions to rebuild the master database .

What should I do when the log shipping fails?

The log shipping job actually works as following :

  1. Create log or other type of backup from source database .
  2. Select backup , include backups created in backup job or previous log shipping job that not shipped.
  3. Restore backups to target database.

That is , even this time it fails (in backup or restore stage ), when it next runs , it will continue from last failure time point, and it can select backup or logs necessary automatically to restore to target database.

I get message "The statement BACKUP LOG is not allowed while the recovery model is SIMPLE ...".

If a database's recovery model is simple, such as master , model .etc system databases , it has no transaction log file , you can only do full and differential backup on this type of database.

But if you change database's recovery model to full or Bulk-logged , you can create transaction log backup from this database.

Following step show how the change a database's recovery mode :

How to restore SQL server database to the point of failure?

To restore a SQL Server database to point of failure, the database's recovery model should not be "Simple", because it needs a transaction log backup to do that, "Simple" recovery model does not have a transaction log.

If your database's recovery modal is "Simple", you can not restore to the point of failure, in this case, please select the latest differential and full backup do the restore. If your database's recovery modal is not "Simple", to restore the database to the point of failure :

1). Back up the tail of the transaction log after SQL Server fails.

After I restore the master database, a database is missing.

If the database is created after master is backed up ,new restored can no be seen in managment studio/enterprise manager, because master backup set has no informaton about the new database, after master is restored , the user database will not be known to SQL Server.

In this case , if all database files comprising the user database still exist on the disk(s), the user database can be created by attaching the database files .
Just open the Query Analyzer , and then execute the following sql statements: (we attach pubs database as sample)