Knowledge Base

Activity monitor showing sqlbackup status as wait type MSQL_XP

Category: Troubleshooting & error messages
Date: 28 Dec 2009
Product: SQL Backup
Versions: 6.2

When viewing the SQL Server Management Studio Activity Monitor or running SP_WHO2, the sqlbackup extended stored procedure shows a resource wait with a wait type of MSQL_XP. Attempting to kill the process will fail because SQL Server does not support killing a SPID running an extended stored procedure.

Since the sqlbackup extended stored procedure's primary function is to send commands to the SQL Backup Agent, the status of the procedure is normally in a wait state because the only time it is not is when it is receiving data from the SQL Backup Agent via a named pipe. With very few exceptions, this does not mean that the process is "hung".

In SQL Backup 6.2, the server process can be abandoned in a wait-state when a backup job fails to complete due to a lack of disk space. Upgrading to version 6.3 will solve this problem.

If the SQL Backup console or the sqbstatus stored procedure shows no backups in progress, the activity being performed may be backup history maintenance or a file copy operation.

In SQL Backup 6, it is worth checking your "log copy queue" in the SQL Backup Console to see if your copy operations are failing frequently and try to resolve the problem.

The only current way to determine the current status of SQL Backup when it is doing "housekeeping" tasks is to dump the program stacks from the SQL Backup Agent. It may require expert examination by our support staff to interpret the output, but you can dump the stacks using the sqbutility extended stored procedure:

 · Connect to the SQL Server with your query tool (SSMS)
 · exec master..sqbutility 9997
 · Get this file from the SQL Server: SQBCoreService_bugreport.txt. It will be created in the SQL Backup server components program folder (%programfiles%\red gate\sql backup 6\(local))