Tag: The transaction log for database ‘dbname’ is full due to ‘REPLICATION’

Errors and Exceptions, SQL

The transaction log for database ‘database name’ is full due to ‘REPLICATION’
Today, we are going to see an exception from SQL Server “The transaction log for database ‘dbname’ is full due to ‘REPLICATION'”.

Recently, we received a backup of a database for a troubleshooting purpose from the production. The database had configured with CDC in Production environment. While we get this database and restored in our local environments, it is observed that the size of the database is very huge and if you look at the size in details, its log that is majorly contributing the size.

Since its huge in size, we tried to shrink the file, please note this is a non-production environment, shrinkfile is not advised to run without a careful consideration and validation. Few references on shrink file written earlier. Since, in our case it was a testing environment, we were free to use this command to reclaim the space.

Msg 9002, Level 17, State 6, Line 10 The transaction log for database ‘Restoredbname’ is full due to ‘REPLICATION’.

It is also observed that log_reuse_wait_desc was showing “REPLICATION” for the database. 

Select log_reuse_wait_desc,* From sys.databases
As we know this db was enabled with CDC in Production environment, the first attempt was to disable CDC on restored database. 

use Restoredbname
sys.sp_cdc_disable_db

Msg 22831, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_cdc_disable_db_internal, Line 262 [Batch Start Line 2] Could not update the metadata that indicates database Restoredbname is not enabled for Change Data Capture. The failure occurred when executing the command ‘(null)’. The error returned was 9002: ‘The transaction log for database ‘Restoredbname’ is full due to ‘REPLICATION’.’. Use the action and error to determine the cause of the failure and resubmit the request.

We also noticed checkpoint was also not successful due to serious disk issue. 
checkpoint

Could not write a checkpoint record in database Restoredbname because the log is out of space. Contact the database administrator to truncate the log or allocate more space to the database log files. Msg 5901, Level 16, State 1, Line 10 One or more recovery units belonging to database ‘Restoredbname’ failed to generate a checkpoint. This is typically caused by lack of system resources such as disk or memory, or in some cases due to database corruption. Examine previous entries in the error log for more detailed information on this failure. Msg 9002, Level 17, State 6, Line 10 The transaction log for database ‘Restoredbname’ is full due to ‘REPLICATION’.

Finally, we decided to apply sp_repldone on the database as below. When xactid is NULL, xact_seqno is NULL, and reset is 1, all replicated transactions in the log are marked as distributed. This is useful when there are replicated transactions in the transaction log that are no longer valid and you want to truncate the log. sp_removedbreplication stored procedure removes all replication objects on the publication database on the Publisher instance of SQL Server or on the subscription database on the Subscriber instance of SQL Server. Once we executed the commands, we were able to shrink the file and the size has been reclaimed to os. 

EXEC sp_repldone @xactid = NULL, @xact_segno = NULL, @numtrans = 0, @time= 0, @reset = 1
sp_removedbreplication

The solution discussed is NOT a general solution nor for Production environments. This should ONLY be used for non-production or lower environments where the restored database is used for testing purpose and truncating log is not a concern!

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