Informix Error -852

Reasons / Common Causes

-852 fires when an UNLOAD operation, after successfully writing a number of lines, fails to write the next one — per the official guidance, a full disk or a disk quota limit are the possible causes named directly in the message itself.

1. A full disk at the unload destination, per the official guidance.
2. A disk quota limit reached (ulimit or filesystem quota) for the account running the operation, per the official guidance — distinct from the disk being physically full.

Solutions / Resolution

1. Look for OS-level error messages that might give more information, per the official guidance.
2. Check disk space at the destination:

   df -h /path/to/output/directory
   

3. Check ulimit settings for the account, per the official guidance's specific mention:

   ulimit -f
   

   (file-size limit) and any filesystem-level quota for the account.
4. Note the count reported — per the official guidance, this tells you how many rows were successfully written before the failure, useful for resuming or verifying partial output.

Examples

Checking disk space and ulimit

$ df -h /path/to/output/directory
$ ulimit -f

Diagnostic Checks

1. Check disk space and the account's ulimit/quota settings — the two specific causes named in the message itself.
2. Note the reported count to understand how much output was successfully written before the failure.

Related Errors / Related Topics

• -806 — "Cannot open file for unload." A related UNLOAD error, about failing to open the output file at all, rather than a write failure partway through.

Check disk space and ulimit/quota — the two specific causes the message itself names.