XADM: Error -509 Occurs When Starting Directory, Information Store, or Dirsync Services

• Microsoft Exchange Server, version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

When you start the Microsoft Exchange Sever version 4.0 Directory service, Information Store service, or the Directory Synchronization service, the service does not start. The Windows NT Event Log indicates that the service in question returned an error code of -509.

CAUSE

This error is returned by the Exchange Server database engine when it encounters a problem replaying log files on startup. Possible reasons for the error are as follows:

• Missing Transaction Log Files.
  When each service starts, it looks for its transaction log files to replay any missing transactions. These log files are by default in the DSADATA, MDBDATA, and DXADATA directories for the Directory, Information Store, and Directory Synchronization services respectively. The location of the log files for each service is configurable through the Exchange Server Performance Wizard.
  
  While replaying the transactions, if a transaction log file is missing, the above error is returned. For example, suppose the DSADATA directory contains the following transaction log files: EDB.LOG, EDB00001.LOG, EDB00002.LOG, EDB00004.LOG, and EDB00005.LOG. It is missing the EDB00003.LOG file. When the Directory Service starts replaying these logs, it will start with EDB.LOG, then go to EDB00005.LOG and then EDB00004.LOG. When it finds the log file EDB00003.LOG is missing it will abort because it cannot proceed to file EDB00002.LOG without processing EDB00003.LOG.



• One or more logs are inaccessible. The log files are marked as read-only, are hidden, or the Exchange Server service account does not have the necessary access rights.



• Not enough free disk space on the drive containing the databases.

RESOLUTION

1. When a log file is missing follow the below procedure:



1. Move all log files created before the missing file out of the log directory (that is, log files with numerically lower names). In the above example, files EDB00002.LOG and EDB00001.LOG should be removed from the directory.



2. Move the EDBCHK.LOG file out of the log directory.



3. Restart the services.



2. One or more Log files is inaccessible.
   
   Check the file permissions and attributes. Make sure that none of the log files is hidden or read-only. The Exchange Service account should have full access to the log files.



3. Lack of free disk space on the drive containing the Exchange databases.
   
   Free up disk space by deleting files and/or directories.

Additional query words: exserver

Keywords          : kbinterop XADM XFOR 
Version           : 4.0 5.0
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : 

Last Reviewed: March 11, 1999