About Archive Sequence Numbers and Archive Sweeping

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All archived items are denoted by an archive sequence number that corresponds to the order in which the items were created in the archive.

To remove all files in an archive with a sequence number lower than a number you specify, use the following syntax:

gfix -archive_sweep <archive_sequence_no> [-force] db_name

If an archived item cannot be swept (garbage-collected), the sweep will stop and return an error status. Sometimes all lower sequenced items cannot be deleted. For example, a database dump may depend on a lower sequenced journal file with which to start recovery. In that case, InterBase will automatically adjust the given sequence number to a lower number, so that this dependency is not lost.