Newforma’s support team has identified an occurrence happening at some of our customer sites.  There is a requirement that the MySQL and Newforma data on the Newforma Project Center Server be excluded from back-ups and anti-virus documented in installation guide, a portion of which reads:

Excluding Newforma and MySQL Data from Backups and Virus Scans


Microsoft has identified in article # 209304 that backing up catalog files created by the Microsoft Indexing Service is a common cause for catalog corruption. This happens when you run a backup or virus scan against the directory containing the catalog files while the Index Server is running. Because the Index Server keeps many of the files in that directory open and mapped into memory, a backup process can potentially corrupt them as it may lock them in order to back them up. To work around this, either stop the Index Server (CISVC) or simply remove that directory from the list of directories you back up.

Similarly, the MySQL database should be excluded from backup and antivirus scanning as corruptions and/or service shutdowns can occur.

If the MySQL database is not excluded from scanning, the scan may lock the database preventing the MySQL service from accessing it and causing the MySQL service to shut down.  Once the MySQL service is stopped, the Newforma Project Center Server service will shut-down as well as it relies on the MySQL service to store and update data.

Attempts to restart the Newforma Service (without first restarting the MySQL service – an easy step to overlook) will fail and the following error can be returned:

“Newforma Project Center Server shut down due to an invalid database.”

When this occurs, it is most likely that the MySQL service has shut down due to the fact that its database is (or was) locked.  Check to see if the MySQL service is running and start it if it is not.  Once the MySQL service is running, the Newforma Project Center Server service should be able to started again.

Backup routines such as VERITAS Backup Exec may lock one of the database files, causing the instability for the database server application.

It is recommended to exclude from the backup and antivirus scans the following directories from the root drive on which MySQL and Newforma Project Center Server were installed:

\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\data (for the MySQL database)

and

\Newforma (for the Indexing database)

and

C:\WINDOWS\temp (this is where MySQL generates temp files used to fulfill certain queries) - Specifically, the “.MYI” extension needs to be excluded from scanning in the temp directory.

For suggestions on backing up your databases, take a look at the Restore the Project Center Server topic in the Newforma Help system.