Why do my subscriptions keep expiring?

  • The subscription(s) have been marked inactive and must be reinitialized. NoSync subscriptions will need to be dropped and recreated. The step failed.

    •Windows Server 2003

    •SQL Server 2000

    •Snapshot Replication

    •Pull Subscriptions

    •Screenshots at the end

    Approx twice a month we are getting one or more of our snapshot Subscriptions expiring with the message shown above.

    The Publications are set to be ‘Never expire, but they can be deactivated until they are re-initialised’

    I read in an internet post that if the expiration time of the subscription is less than the Transaction Retention period of the Distributor then this could cause the Subscriptions to expire. The retention period is at least 0 and but not more than 72 hours

    How does this affect Snapshot replication? Is this relevant?

    The subscriptions are not run from within the replication monitor, if fact they have never been started. We actually run the steps from a SQL Agent job as shown below.

    1.update distribution..MSsubscriptions set status = 2

    2.sp_MSadd_snapshot_history @perfmon_increment = 0, @agent_id = 3, @runstatus = 1,

    @comments = 'Starting agent.'

    3.-Publisher [MySQLServer] -PublisherDB [XPS] -Distributor [MySQLServer] -Publication [XPSB] -DistributorSecurityMode 1 -output e:\data\repldata\unc\xpsbap_snapshot.log

    4.sp_MSdetect_nonlogged_shutdown @subsystem = 'Snapshot', @agent_id

    5.-Publisher MySQLServer -PublisherDB [XPS] -Publication [XPSB] -Distributor [MySQLServer] -SubscriptionType 1 -Subscriber [MySQLServer] -SubscriberSecurityMode 0 -SubscriberLogin [sa] -SubscriberEncryptedPassword [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -SubscriberDB [XPSB]

    Step #5 is the one that usually fails with the message as show at the top of this text. I’m not logging this step to an OS file which now seems like an oversight.

    Any ideas on what could be happening would be gratefully received.

  • Hi,

    What frequency are you running the snapshot replication?

    Have you thought of changing the setting from Never Expire to expire after 336 hours ?

    Regards

    Graeme

  • Hi,

    Snapshot replication takes place evey 24hrs.

    I've not tried setting the option 'next expire' to be every '336 hours' as you suggest. Is this

    likely to make any difference?

    Dave

  • Not sure..probably not...but that is the default setting

    Can I ask why you do the following

    update distribution..MSsubscriptions set status = 2

    Thanks

    Graeme

  • Clutching a straws really. Ww couldnt work out why these subscriptions got marked as inactive so we

    attempted to each day make sure they are active.

    Dave

  • Hi,

    Seeing as you are using a Pull subscription have you checked the distribution agent at the Subscriber as I assume that is where it will run.

    You noted that the agent had never run on the publisher...this would make sense for a Pull subscription

    Graeme

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