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Alert Log File

The alert log records database operation messages and errors, including startups, shutdowns, errors, and SQL statements. It is a text file located in the $ORACLE_HOME/RDBMS/trace directory by default, but its location can be determined by the background_dump_dest initialization parameter. The alert log contains useful information for troubleshooting issues like block corruption, deadlocks, and media recovery errors.

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74 views

Alert Log File

The alert log records database operation messages and errors, including startups, shutdowns, errors, and SQL statements. It is a text file located in the $ORACLE_HOME/RDBMS/trace directory by default, but its location can be determined by the background_dump_dest initialization parameter. The alert log contains useful information for troubleshooting issues like block corruption, deadlocks, and media recovery errors.

Uploaded by

tryme4luv
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Oracle's alert.

log chronologically records messages and errors arising from the daily database
operation. Also, there are pointers to trace files and dump files.
These messages include

 startups and shutdowns of the instance


 Messages to the operator console
 Errors causing trace files.
 Create, alter and drop SQL statements on databases, tablespaces and rollback
segments.
 Errors when a materialized view is refreshed.
 ORA-00600 (internal) errors.
 ORA-01578 errors (block corruption)
 ORA-00060 errors (deadlocks)
alert.log is a text file that can be opened with any text editor. The directory where it is found can
be determined by the background_dump_dest initialization parameter:

select value from v$parameter where name = 'background_dump_dest';

If the background_dump_dest parameter is not specified, Oracle will write the alert.log into the
$ORACLE_HOME/RDBMS/trace directory.
Here's a shell/awk script to analyze alert logs.

Common messages in the alert log

ARCx: Media recovery disabled


This message will be written into the alert.log if the arch process is started with the database
being in noarchive log mode.
It's unfortunately possible for ARCH to be sitting around doing nothing apart from just taking up
memory when the database is in noarchive log mode.
The archiver can be stopped dynamically: alter system archive log stop.

Ignoring SIGALARM
Such a message is written into the alert log when a process that waited for a semaphore gets the
semaphore shortly befor the timeout expires and doesn't have the time to switch the timeout
mechanism off.

Thread 1 cannot allocate new log, sequence 1558 Checkpoint


not complete
This error message is written into the alert.log if a checkpoint cannot write all dirty db blocks to
the online redo log.
Usually, this message is a sign that the size of the redo logs is to small or that there should be
more of them.

Rotating the alert logs


Within Oracle, it is perfectly possible to delete, or rename, the alert.log, if desired (for example, if
it reaches a certain size). Oracle simply recreates a new alert.log the next time it writes to it.
Linux (and other Unixes?) has an utility called logrotate to automate that task.

Writing own messages into the alert log


The undocumented procedure kdswrt in dbms_system allows to write own messages in the alert
log.
begin

sys.dbms_system.ksdwrt(2, 'My own message');

end;

Reading the alert log through an external table


Here is a procedure which creates an external table that can be used to read the alert.log.
There is also a script to read the alert log which doesn't require a procedure such as the previous
link.

Thanks
Thanks go to Sharif Siouri who notified me of an error on this page.

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