Ran across two completely unrelated problems which are worth mentioning in
hopes of saving other folks grief.

First:  We have DBGENERAL Version 7.1.24.  Evidently there is an internal
limit in this version to how many set-items can exist.  If you get beyond
that limit, it is possible to simple start losing items out of sets.  The
items themselves stay in the database as unreferenced items, but the set is
now down an item or two (and of course all the data just disappears).  This
happens silently.  Interestingly enough, removing a bunch of items from the
set that was having trouble (and thus also from the database as a whole) didn't
solve the problem.  Bradmark is supposedly sending me a new version, but I've
not seen it yet.

This is the first complaint I've ever had with DBGENERAL--it has served us well
thus far, but be warned if you are on any 7.1.2x version, call Bradmark and
get the latest version.

Second:  I was using perl in a job and had it printing out some debug
information, but didn't put a "\n" at the end of the print command.  I ended
up with 4 corrupted spoolfiles before I figured out what was going on.
Evidently somewhere somebody can't handle lines without \n in a $STDLIST.  I
deleted them and they remained at "delete pending" status.  If I tried to read
or purge them, it would report BAD VARIABLE BLOCK STRUCTURE  (FSERR 105).
I left a message at ESC and the engineer advised doing an FSCHECK.  I got
everyone off the system and did an FSCHECK.  Discovered a bunch of files with
no directory entries (mostly AUTOINST and AIsomething--they all looked as if
they had been created by installs or system utilities), but nothing about
spoolfiles.  Stopped the spooler for that device and re-FSCHECKed.  No luck.
Eventually took the system down and brought it back up.  That did it.  Anywho.
That's about all I know on the subject.

Ted
--
Ted Ashton ([log in to unmask]), Info Serv, Southern Adventist University
          ==========================================================
A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it
almost seem like a live teacher.
                        -- Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)