Informix Error -1250: Unable to create pipes.

Reasons / Common Causes

-1250 fires when the application, using an operating-system pipe facility to initialize communication with the database server, receives an unexpected OS error — per the official guidance, this is an OS-level resource/permission problem, not an application logic error.

1. An operating-system resource limit reached (file descriptors, pipe capacity), per the official guidance's framing — the OS itself returned the error.
2. A permissions problem preventing pipe creation, more generally, given the official guidance's pointer to OS-level error messages for more detail.

Solutions / Resolution

1. Look for operating-system error messages that might give more information, per the official guidance — the OS-level error accompanying this one typically narrows the cause.
2. Check OS resource limits (open file/descriptor limits) and permissions for the account running the application.

Examples

Checking OS-level resource limits

$ ulimit -n
$ dmesg | tail -20

Diagnostic Checks

1. Check the operating-system log/error output around the time of this failure for the underlying OS-level cause.
2. Check resource limits (file descriptors) and permissions for the account running the application.

Related Errors / Related Topics

• -1251 — "Unable to create shared memory. semget failed." A related connection- initialization error, about shared memory (semget) rather than pipes.
• -1252 — "Unable to create shared memory. shmget failed." Another related connection- initialization error, about shared memory (shmget).

An OS-level pipe-creation failure during connection initialization — check OS error messages, resource limits, and permissions.