Looking for a clever suggestion for inittab and rc.informix

The inittab files on our AIX systems have an entry for rc.informix (to start Informix at boot). This normally works fine but we recently ran into a situation where a combination of AIX/Informix Parameters caused the whole system to crash, go through recovery, only to crash again...you get the idea. To clear the situation we finally had to boot from cd-rom and rename the rc.informix file so that inittab couldn't find it. Then we fixed the problem and brought Informix up manually. This prompted the question "is there a way that we could put a prompt with a timeout in the rc.informix file. If no one responded it would bring up Informix.". Anyone with a clever idea?

One way would be to use a lock file. Check to see if a 'lock' (say /tmp/inf.lock) file exists - if it doesnt then create the lock file (/tmp/inf.lock in this case) start informix if informix starts ok then delete the lock file end if end if That way it will only try the once On Wed, 01 Sep 1999, FProse wrote: >The inittab files on our AIX systems have an entry for rc.informix (to >start Informix at boot). This normally works fine but we recently ran >into a situation where a combination of AIX/Informix Parameters caused >the whole system to crash, go through recovery, only to crash >again...you get the idea. > >To clear the situation we finally had to boot from cd-rom and rename >the rc.informix file so that inittab couldn't find it. Then we fixed >the problem and brought Informix up manually. > >This prompted the question "is there a way that we could put a prompt >with a timeout in the rc.informix file. If no one responded it would >bring up Informix.". > >Anyone with a clever idea?