Re: Engine Crashes - Are they acceptable? (fwd)
ennis@ssax.com (Bill Ennis) wrote: > > Hi, > > Under what situations is it acceptable for the Informix Engine > to crash? Hardware failure should idealy have been the only one and possibly some grave configuration errors. However we have to accept a small set of bugs that will also crash the engine. In our 7.10.UC1 engine on SCO 3.2.4.2 we have a very simple and correct 4GL program that will crash the engine "reliably" every time it is run. (We don't run it ;) The big problem is that these kinds of bugs are not easily accessible anywhere. (They may be at the prehistoric modem based Informix Link you can subscribe to. We do however not consider using a 2400 baud modem and terminal emulator a viable option.) This will hopefully change when Informix finish the upgrade of their web site. > We're running Online version 7.12 on HP/UX and have had 2 independent > engine crashes of the engine at a customer site in the last 2 weeks. > > The first crash referenced a shortage of memory from a socpoll.c > informix source file. Yesterday's crash had a bunch of assertion failures > and a complaint from the informix file mt.c. > > Are these bugs? I would think there would be a VERY limited set of > circumstances where the engine going down is acceptable yet when I call > into tech suuport there doesn't seem to be much concern or help. The systems > come back up after the crash and thats all tech support seems to care about. I have no idea whether these are bugs, and you should probably post the part of your online log that shows these messages to enable someone with more expertise in this area to help you. However I would not accept that tech support is finished when the engine is back on line. I haven't ever had to do that either when calling tech support here in Scandinavia. They are actually very conserned to find the real reason for the crash or whatever other problem we have had. If your tech support person isn't, simply ask for the name of his manager and call him. If you are polite and understanding they should help you. When your engine is crashing for unknown reasons (noone can tell you why and what to do to avoide it) I would go all the way to the very top of Informix to find out. Crashes for unknown reasons are not acceptable. If they happen Informix has to find out exactly why and possibly record another defect. If not we will soon all have only bad engines available. Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company