Replication Distribution Agent Does Not Start

Hi,

For some magical reason, my database replication has suddenly stopped
working. I modified the publication but the Distribution agent will
not run; the snapshot does not get applied to the subscriber, and
changes made at the publisher do not get replicated.

My configuration is: Transactional Replication with a 'Pull'
Subscription. The Subscriber is Updateable with Immediate Updates
Only. All created via the SQL Server Enterprise Manager. Both the
Publisher and Subscriber are on the same server. I'm running SQL
Server 2000 (8.00.760 SP3), on Windows 2000 Server (5.0 (2195)).

I manually run the snapshop agent. It runs fine with the status
'Succeeded' and the Last Action is 'A Snapshot of X article(s) was
generated'.

When I look at the distribution agent, things start to get a bit
confusing in ( <SERVERNAME>/Replication Monitor/ Publishers/
<SERVERNAME?>/ Publication/ Subscription), the status stays
constantly at 'Never Started'. All other columns are either blank or
0. When I right click over the subscription, both Start Synchronising
and Stop Synchronising are NOT greyed out. If I click on either Start
Synchronising or Stop Synchronising (absolutely) nothing happens
(except the mouse turns 'busy' for a fraction of a second). There are
no error messages.

I added -output c:\sqlout.txt -outputverboselevel 3 to the
distribution agent command. C:\sqlout.txt did not get created.

It worked fine up to a couple of days ago. I'm not sure exactly what
caused the problem, as I made a few changes at the same time. The
changes included: adding a new transactional publication, adding more
articles to an existing transaction publication, and adding a merge
publication. I've tried to go back to the set up before I made the
changes, even disabling replication and starting again from scratch.
Still the problem persists.

The owner of the distribution agent has dbo permissions in both the
publishing and subscribing database. Under 'Publisher and Distributor
Properties' I've set the 'Replication Agent Connection to Publisher'
and 'Agent Connection to the Subscriber' both to Use SQL Server
Authentication, both with the same account that has dbo permissions in
both publishing and subscribing database.

Has anybody come across this problem before? Can anybody make any
suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards

Damian Helme
IS Manager
INTEC Engineering (UK) Ltd."Damian H" <damianhelme@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:2b893e38.0407222337.542a5fd1@.posting.google.c om...
> Hi,
> For some magical reason, my database replication has suddenly stopped
> working. I modified the publication but the Distribution agent will
> not run; the snapshot does not get applied to the subscriber, and
> changes made at the publisher do not get replicated.
>
> My configuration is: Transactional Replication with a 'Pull'
> Subscription. The Subscriber is Updateable with Immediate Updates
> Only. All created via the SQL Server Enterprise Manager. Both the
> Publisher and Subscriber are on the same server. I'm running SQL
> Server 2000 (8.00.760 SP3), on Windows 2000 Server (5.0 (2195)).
> I manually run the snapshop agent. It runs fine with the status
> 'Succeeded' and the Last Action is 'A Snapshot of X article(s) was
> generated'.
> When I look at the distribution agent, things start to get a bit
> confusing in ( <SERVERNAME>/Replication Monitor/ Publishers/
> <SERVERNAME?>/ Publication/ Subscription), the status stays
> constantly at 'Never Started'. All other columns are either blank or
> 0. When I right click over the subscription, both Start Synchronising
> and Stop Synchronising are NOT greyed out. If I click on either Start
> Synchronising or Stop Synchronising (absolutely) nothing happens
> (except the mouse turns 'busy' for a fraction of a second). There are
> no error messages.
> I added -output c:\sqlout.txt -outputverboselevel 3 to the
> distribution agent command. C:\sqlout.txt did not get created.
> It worked fine up to a couple of days ago. I'm not sure exactly what
> caused the problem, as I made a few changes at the same time. The
> changes included: adding a new transactional publication, adding more
> articles to an existing transaction publication, and adding a merge
> publication. I've tried to go back to the set up before I made the
> changes, even disabling replication and starting again from scratch.
> Still the problem persists.
> The owner of the distribution agent has dbo permissions in both the
> publishing and subscribing database. Under 'Publisher and Distributor
> Properties' I've set the 'Replication Agent Connection to Publisher'
> and 'Agent Connection to the Subscriber' both to Use SQL Server
> Authentication, both with the same account that has dbo permissions in
> both publishing and subscribing database.
> Has anybody come across this problem before? Can anybody make any
> suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help.
> Regards
> Damian Helme
> IS Manager
> INTEC Engineering (UK) Ltd.

You might want to post this in microsoft.public.sqlserver.replication, as
you may get a better answer over there.

Simon