System Deadlock
dear gurus, I'll try to explain the situation I've just run into. I had a big table(50000 rows) in a database with logs. I run a delete(from isql qery language) on that table which envolved a high percent of the rows (I know it wasn't a good idea) Something like 30 minutes later I returned to the screen where the isql was running. As it seemed to have no end, I tried to interrup it. It wasn't so easy, so I tried with tmode -z. Nothing happened. So I run tbstat and I found the following situation: address number flags uniqid begin size used %used 80427c8c 1 U---C-L 757 100332 250 250 100.00 80427ca8 2 U-B---- 754 10042c 250 250 100.00 80427cc4 3 U-B---- 755 100526 250 250 100.00 80427ce0 4 U-B---- 756 100620 250 250 100.00 All the logs marked as being backed-up !! I think the most important thing I have to mention is that the logs backup device was set to ... /dev/null !!!! Users address flags pid user tty wait tout locks nreads nwrites 804019b4 ------D 982 informix console 0 0 0 8 2 80401a14 ------D 0 informix console 0 0 0 0 0 80401a74 ------F 983 informix 0 0 0 0 0 80401ad4 ------F 984 informix 0 0 0 0 0 80401b34 --R-X-- 0 coinvdba 0 0 0 45 10 80401b94 --A---M 989 informix console 0 0 0 0 0 6 active, 30 total The user was in rollback mode, and the online status log file had a warning about a long transaction being rolled back. I put the system off-line, and when trying to get it to quiescent mode it entered recovery mode. This mode didn't EVER finish. The machine was shutdown, and when the OnLine was up again (automatically by init) it was again in recovery mode. NOTHING could be done, because everything I tried (archive, add logs, can't remember what else) should be done in quiescent mode, and there was no way to get it. Thanks god it is a machine used only for development of applications. So, after 2 days, we decided to re-initialize online and get everything from an archive. We have no problem now, everything is fine; but what would happened if it was a real system ? Was there any solution we couldn't see at all? Any suggestions welcomed ale. -- Maria Alejandra Perez Weiss alex@lucas.mrec.ar PNUD - Min. Rel. Exteriores alex%lucas.mrec.ar@uunet.uu.net Buenos Aires - Argentina ...!uunet!atina!lucas!alex