"tbmode -z doesn't kill" - The Answers for Newbies

Hi, this is newby Eric. A week ago I posted saying that my first Real World experience with "tbmode -z" in Informix 4.11 didn't work. The process wouldn't die and I had to call in The Bearded One who killed it with "kill". I asked if experienced users used tbmode or kill? I was really pleased to get over a dozen answers in only a couple of days. Thank you Dan, Bob, Ulf, Jack, John, Peter, Bass, Janet, Roar, Andy, Joe, Kristian, Diane, June and David. The following 'one liners' from nine different people shows the range of opinions expressed: "Have experienced the same problem, tbmode -z did not do anything useful in a number of Informix versions. It was corrected in version 5." "We often have similar problems." "In my REAL life, I always use "kill" since I found out that tbmode -Z never worked since '90. This is true from 4.01 all the way to 5.X." "Hmm, I remember going through the same sort of process, and then being told by tech support told that 'tbmode -z' was broken on V4 for Sun." "Mostly, on my system, the database process will go away, but *probably* later." "Tbmode -z will rollback the process for you nicely, so many times I've experienced that it takes quite a while before the process stops..." "Well, it doesn't always work as well or as fast as we'd like... " "Tbmode doesn't so much *kill* the process as give it permission to die at its earliest convenience. Sometimes that could be many hours." "In my experience, tbmode -z gets the process out of informix." So opinions range from 'It Doesn't Work' through 'It's Slow' to 'It Does Work'. However, there was enough broad agreement in the posts to offer some guidelines to the timid: 1) Before killing anything, read and understand the flags in tbstat -u. 2) If you then issue a tbmode -z, don't be impatient for a result - like I was - some posters reported 'hours' before termination. 3) Check for process disappearance from tbmode -z, not complete disappearence from ps -ef. There can still be 'bits' left lying around after Informix has lost interest in the process. 4) Don't ever kill -9 an sqlturbo process. EVER! It seems like a fairly reliable way to crash your database. So that's it fellow newbies. I don't know enough to advise anybody yet, so for now I'll stick with what the people have told me in 1) to 4). Eric =============================================================== Eric Warner Northop, Clwyd, North Wales, U.K. Disclaimer: I disclaim everything. ===============================================================