Informix Error -641

Reasons / Common Causes

-641 fires when a RESERVE/RELEASE statement names a family that isn't on optical media — per the official guidance, the named family must actually exist on optical media; naming an ordinary storage space instead triggers this error.

1. A RESERVE/RELEASE statement naming an ordinary storage space instead of an optical family, per the official guidance — the direct, only cause.
2. A naming or copy-paste mistake, confusing an optical family name with a similarly-named ordinary dbspace/blobspace.

Solutions / Resolution

1. Check that the statement doesn't name a storage space, per the official guidance, in place of a genuine optical family name.
2. Confirm the correct optical family name with whoever administers the Optical Subsystem configuration, if there's any doubt about which names refer to families versus ordinary storage spaces.

Examples

The disallowed attempt

RESERVE family ordinary_blobspace;
-- -641: ordinary_blobspace is a storage space, not an optical family

Corrected

RESERVE family optical_family1;

Diagnostic Checks

1. Confirm the named identifier is actually a configured optical family, not an ordinary storage-space name, before retrying RESERVE/RELEASE.

Related Errors / Related Topics

• -638 — "Cannot cluster TEXT or BYTE columns on non-optical media." A related error about the same storage-space-vs-optical-media distinction, in the context of optical clusters rather than RESERVE/RELEASE.
• -642 — "Family name must be a character string." A related RESERVE/RELEASE error, about the name's syntax/type rather than what it refers to.

The named identifier isn't a genuine optical family — confirm the correct family name rather than a storage-space name.