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Informix Error -601

-601 Cannot delete TEXT or BYTE value.

This statement replaces or deletes a BYTE or TEXT value, but some unexpected error prevented the deletion of the old value. Roll back the current transaction. Check the accompanying ISAM error code for more information. Possibly a hardware error or data corruption of the storage space or tblspace occurred. If the error recurs, note all circumstances and contact IBM Informix Technical Support.

Oninit® Troubleshooting Guidance

Reasons / Common Causes

-601 fires when replacing or deleting an existing TEXT/BYTE (simple large object) value fails unexpectedly — the second stage in the same three-error family as -600 (create) and -602 (open/locate).

  1. Hardware error or data corruption in the storage space/tblspace holding the old BLOB value, per the official guidance — the specific, most likely cause, more serious than -600's typical space-shortage cause.
  2. An underlying ISAM-level error during the delete/replace, per the official guidance's pointer to checking the accompanying ISAM error code for other possibilities.
Solutions / Resolution
  1. Roll back the current transaction, per the official guidance.
  2. Check the accompanying ISAM error code, per the official guidance, for the specific underlying reason.
  3. Check for hardware errors or corruption in the storage space/tblspace, per the official guidance — this is a more serious class of cause than a simple space shortage, and may warrant running platform-level disk diagnostics or an Informix consistency-check utility against the affected dbspace.
  4. If this recurs, note all circumstances and contact IBM Informix Technical Support, per the official guidance — given the corruption/hardware framing, this is likely to need vendor-level involvement rather than an application-level fix.
Examples
Checking for storage-level problems
$ onstat -d
-- review chunk status for the blobspace/dbspace holding the affected TEXT/BYTE value,
-- and check OS-level disk/hardware logs for related errors
Diagnostic Checks
  1. Check the accompanying ISAM error code first, per the official guidance.
  2. Check chunk status (onstat -d) and OS-level hardware/disk logs for the storage space involved, given the official guidance's specific framing around hardware error/corruption.
Related Errors / Related Topics
  • -600 — "Cannot create TEXT or BYTE value." Same family, at the create stage rather than delete/replace.
  • -602 — "Cannot open TEXT or BYTE value." Same family, at the open/locate stage.

The second stage in the same three-error BLOB-operation family as -600/-602 — the official guidance points more specifically at hardware error/corruption here than at -600's space shortage.