Subversion 1.4.3 "Resource Device" error on Windows platform.

Hi all.

I have a problem that I have encountered in both Subversion 1.3.2 and now 1.4.3

We have a repository called HcnProducts and occasionally any access to it results in the following error:

     Berkeley DB error for filesystem 'HcnProducts/db' while opening 'strings' table:
     Resource device

All tools including the svnadmin.exe tool get the same 'Resource device' error.

When we were using version 1.3.2 the repository used to be in FSFS format but we seemed to be hitting some sort of race condition where it was trying to delete transaction directories before they were empty.
So at that stage I converted to the Berkeley DB (BDB) format which seemed to resolve that problem (so I never posted about it).
But eventually the above error started occurring, so I upgraded to 1.4.3
This version also has the same problem.

The server is running 'Windows Server 2003 R2 SP1'
Subversion is only accessed via the svnserve.exe service.

When the problem occurs I've been using some tools from SysInternals to look at the situation.
It appears that the top level Windows process called 'System' has a file handle referencing the D:\SvnRepository\HcnProducts\db\strings BDB file.
After what seems like at least an hour or so, this handle finally disappears and then all access to the repository is restored to normal.

I've used Process Monitor from SysInternals to monitor file handles on the strings file under normal operations, and I see references to it from the svnserve.exe service but they only last for less than a second as they are needed.
The 'System' process doesn't seem to reference it under normal operations.
However I am yet to do this monitoring while a build is in progress to see if the 'System' process ever needs to reference the BDB file.

The problem seems to be triggered when our automatic builds happen.
However running an automatic build doesn't guarantee that the problem will occur (ie it's an intermittent problem).
I believe that part of the build process is to create a number of tags marking the build point.
I'm not in charge of the build scripts so I don't know the full details, but if you need more info I'm sure I could sort it out.
I've CC:ed the build script maintainer on this email.

I'm not sure what other information you might need...
Currently the BDB strings file is around 8 GB in size.
Developers are using TortoiseSVN on their PCs for access to the repository.
I'm guessing the build computer uses the tools as supplied by the subversion install.

So does anyone know how I can avoid the 'System' process from grabbing a handle on the strings file that it won't release?
Could it possibly be a bug in how Subversion handles a BDB database on a Windows system?

Thanks.

-- 
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Jim Barber
DDI Health
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