Oracle Novice

[Louis Mushandu]

How do I check when a Oracle DB has been brought up and down. Is there a log file. Thanks in advance.

[Kofi ARTHIABAH]

I usually do a

ps -ef | grep oracle

if there are any processes running with oracle user name, it is likely that it is still running.

you can shut it down with
/sbin/init.d/oracle stop
(if you have configured the start/stop scripts properly)

you could set up your start/stop script to write to the syslog file when starting /stopping if you want.

[Kofi ARTHIABAH]

If you do not have the oracle init scripts, you might want to check this thread:

http://my1.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x6b5468c57f64d4118fee0090279cd0f9,00.html

[CHRIS ANORUO]

Use ipcs -mob to check shared memory sets associated with oracle process(databases) and or ipcs -t to check the time (OTIME and CTIME)

[James R. Ferguson]

Louis:

If you do a ps -ef|grep ora_ you will see some of the key oracle processes like:
ora_dbwr_XXX, ora_lgwr_XXX, ora_pmon_XXX and ora_smon_XXX where XXX=the database name. This is useful when you are running multiple instances.

...JRF...

[Rick Garland · Accepted solution]

If you look in the bdump and/or cdump areas of the oracle layout, you will find logs that indicate when the DB was up, brought down, ant errors, etc...

The location of these particular areas depends on the layout of the oracle install.

There are also LISTENER log files that can tell you the uptime for the LISTENER. Again, the location depends on the layout.

Also, the layout depends on how many instances you have on the system. They will be different for each instance.

To see processes related to the oracle $LOGNAME, can do ps -fu oracle

[CHRIS ANORUO]

If you are root or oracle user, just type "lsnrctl stat" this will show you the status of the listener that Rick mentioned.

[P V Patel]

You may check whether oracle is running or not with
ps -ef | grep ora_ command.
ora_smon_xxx,ora_pmon_xxxx,ora_lgwr_xxxx etc . processes should be there when oracle is running.
You may start oracle with following script:

svrmgrl <connect internal
startup pfile=$PFILE
EOF
P V Patel

[John Palmer]

The database server log file is called 'alert_.log' and will be in the 'user dump' directory configured in the Oracle initialisation file (by default $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/init.ora or as defined by the pfile= parameter to svrmgrl).

This log contains (amongst a lot of other information) details of instance startup and shutdown.