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Informix Error -646

-646 Cannot release volume.

An attempt to release a requested optical volume with the RELEASE statement has failed. See the error from the optical subsystem (an error in the -7000 to -7199 range) for more information.

Oninit® Troubleshooting Guidance

Reasons / Common Causes

-646 is the mirror image of -645: it fires when a RELEASE statement's attempt to release a requested optical volume fails — per the official guidance, the specific reason is carried by an accompanying error from the optical subsystem itself, in the same -7000 to -7199 range as -645.

  1. An underlying optical-subsystem-level failure during the release operation, per the official guidance's pointer to the accompanying -7000..-7199 error.
  2. A valid RELEASE statement syntactically failing at the physical/subsystem level instead, the same pattern as -645 but for releasing rather than reserving.
Solutions / Resolution
  1. Check the accompanying optical-subsystem error (in the -7000 to -7199 range), per the official guidance — that error carries the specific reason the release failed.
  2. Confirm the requested family/volume identify a volume that was actually reserved by this session (or one it has permission to release), since a valid-looking RELEASE can fail if there's nothing matching to release.
  3. Engage whoever administers the Optical Subsystem hardware if the accompanying -7000..-7199 error points to a hardware-level condition.
Examples
Checking the accompanying optical-subsystem error
-- A -646 failure is accompanied by a second error in the -7000..-7199
-- range -- that error identifies the specific subsystem-level reason
-- (this errata set doesn't currently cover that separate numeric range).
Diagnostic Checks
  1. Identify and look up the accompanying -7000..-7199 optical-subsystem error code — the documented path to the specific cause, per the official guidance.
Related Errors / Related Topics
  • -641 — "Cannot reserve/release family on non-optical media." A related, earlier-stage RESERVE/RELEASE validation error.
  • -642 — "Family name must be a character string." A related earlier-stage validation error.
  • -643 — "Volume must be a number." A related earlier-stage validation error.
  • -645 — "Cannot reserve volume." The mirror-image failure, on the RESERVE side.

The mirror image of -645 — same accompanying -7000..-7199 error range carries the specific cause.