Time Machine stopped backing up certain files

Hi, I am running OS X Server 10.5.4. (Yes, upgrade is planned)
Time Machine has been running fine, backing up everything, etc.
However, at some point, Time Machine stopped backing up certain files regularly. The affected files are all Frontier databases (frontierkernel.org). They are 'open' files, and I wonder if this is the cause. However, I know that they used to be backed up regularly, without problems. So, maybe Time Machine was updated in 10.5.4 to change this behavior?
If I quit Frontier and then reopen it, Time Machine will back up the files. So, this tells me that TM can back up open files... sometimes. But, if I let the machine run for days, TM often skips these files, even though they have been updated on disk.
I've checked and these files are not set to be excluded from TM.
Any ideas? Thanks.

Bill Dennen wrote:
Waiting for index to be ready (-911 < 0)
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.</div>
These aren't the cause, but might indicate a problem with, or communicating with, your TM drive. Try the things in #D2 of the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
Everything else looks normal (assuming the files in question are on the 06-0834 drive).
Since the same files are backed-up sometimes but not others, it's probably also not something corrupted (usually, corruption will cause the backup to fail, but rarely a whole folder won't get backed-up).
So we're back to your original suspicion that they weren't backed-up because they were open. Normally, an open file will be backed-up. In the case of large databases, that's often a problem, as the entire database is backed-up if only a single small change is made, often taking up a lot of time and disk space. There are a many threads here about that.
There does appear to be an extended attribute that will prevent TM from backing up a file. XCODE seems to set that on it's "build" folders, for example. Perhaps the Frontier package sets it while the files are open, and removes it when they're closed? If so, maybe there's an option somewhere to disable that?
Can you check with the Sourceforge folks about that?
Otherwise, sorry, but I'm out of ideas.

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