Update System Tables

Update sysindexes table in Sybase 12.5.4

I am moving a Sybase instance from one host to another. I have done all the installation and patching and I have loaded all the databases with little to no issues. I ran into a big issue when attempting to change to indexes in sysservers to allow duplicate rows. I had to go and find out what the binary value for the setting that I wanted was and then find out what column held that value. I determined, from looking at my current instance, that I needed the Status colunm to be changed to 64. I then verified this by looking here at the definitions for the table.

 http://infocenter.sybase.com/help/index….

I attempted droping the indexes so that I could just recreate them but you are not able to use Drop Index when working with system tables. That is when I decided to find the value and the column to update. So then I ran a query:

Select name, status from sysindexes

where name = ‘csysservers’

and status = 146

go

This returned on row for me and I thought now I can run the update

update sysindexes

set status = 40

where name = ‘csysservers’

and status = 146

go

Now I get the following error:

Cannot update more than 1 sysindexes row at a time.

Well this did not make sense at all. When I run the select I only get one row returned. But I took the advice of the error and modified my where clause to include more columns and then I was able to make the updates that I needed.