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Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

 
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cazxd
Advisor

Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

HP9000(RP5430)L-class server with UX 11 and Oracle 8.1.7.
Afer stopping the database and running the cold backup. the oracle failed to start.

Checked server and found the free space for mount point "/var" is very low (99% used).

After purging a couple log files. there were 80M aviable for "/var" and succeed to start the oracle database.


I purged
1.) /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log
2.) /var/adm/syslog/mail.log
3.) /var/spool/mqueue/syslog
4.) /var/mail/root

I wonder to which log file the UX will write when it start a process. and why the oracle failed to start dure to the low space on the "/var".

Thank you for your answer

Cazxd
question
15 REPLIES 15
Jean-Luc Oudart
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

Did you check the alert log file ?

JL
fiat lux
Todd McDaniel_1
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

I would perform an cleanup on your old patches...

backup them to the /tmp first if you need to keep them or from an old ignite tape...

cleanup -p -c 2 ##to check what are avail to remove.. .then do

cleanup -c 2

IF you need more space do:

cleanup -c 1 to remove those superceeded only once...

This should give you much more space.
Unix, the other white meat.
Graham Cameron_1
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

Look in your alert log for error messages.

It's location is defined by the background_dump_dest parameter in your init.ora file. (or from "sqlplus / as sysdba" use "show parameter back")

Maybe your setup is doing stuff on /var, but it would be better not to.

-- Graham
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
Steven E. Protter
Exalted Contributor

Re: Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

I hope by purge you mean you dropped their size to zero.

These files are critical for security and need to be there.

sam has a log trim facility under routine tasks that will trim one or all of the dozens of logs on your systems.

print spoolers store output in /var and you sholld make sure your print spoolers are periodically purged of old print jobs./

IF you still are tight on space you can extend /var with online JFS or if not, you can extend it in single user mode.

Let us know if you wish to extend the /var filesystem.

Oracle might be putting alert logs on /var. Check your init.ora files for where files are written.

SEP
Steven E Protter
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Todd McDaniel_1
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

One thing about what Steven just said...regarding /var and Oracle.

IF your /var/tmp is not linked to /tmp, I would strongly recommend doing so. Oracle uses /var/tmp for some storage of data.

All mine are linked to /tmp and I increased my /tmp to 8gb on all boxes where I have databases. Also on my web tier, where users can max out a 2gb /tmp with one bad query.
Unix, the other white meat.
Michael Schulte zur Sur
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

Hi,

deleting files, which are in use, wont do you any good. The space still keeps occupied. Check, that tmp does not point to /var.

greetings,

Michael
John Garrott
Occasional Advisor

Re: Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

You might also want to look at your Oracle init.ora parameters. Settings such as log_archive_dest could be writing archivelog files to /var. These files can grow rapidly in a heavily-used OLTP application and the database will not start if the destination filesystem is full.

John Garrott
Bill Hassell
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

The key here is that /var is 99% used. This is not just an Oracle problem, it is a CRUCIAL problem for the entire system. /var must never be allowed to become full and requires daily maintenance if necessary. But never arbitrarily remove log files or any files until you know it will do some good. For instance, if /var is 500megs and you remove all the logfiles, you might gain back 2 or 3 megs...not a good use of your time. Start by finding the directories with the largest occupied space:

du -kx /var | sort -rn | head -20

You should see something like this:

454104 /var
427568 /var/adm
427288 /var/adm/sw
336792 /var/adm/sw/save

In this case, /var/adm/sw/save is the big area that needs trimming. Since thes are rollback patches (needed to remove an old patch), you can run the cleanup command to commit patches (no rollback). You can decide how far back to go, perhaps keeping the previous patch and maybe the one before that. See the man page for cleanup.

But notice that the /save directory is 336 megs! That's a lot so you concentrate on that directory. DO NOT remove files in the sw directory! Instead use cleanup and swmodify (to commit patches). If you remove files with rm, you may never be able to patch or load any software ever again.

Now if insteaad you see /var/tmp or /var/mail or /var/spool as being very large, then you have to deal with each directory based on it's usage. /var/mail is email and if it is large, somone (or something) has sent far too much mail to a user. Use this command:

ll /var/mail | sort -rnk5 | head

to find the largest mailboxes. Then look in the biggest mailbox to find why the file is so large. In short, find the directories that have the largest amount of data and fix them first. syslog.log and mail.log were probably fairly small. And make sure /var is big enough. 200 megs is way to small, and even 1000 megs may not be large enough. But you'll need a cron job customized for your environment to keep the temp files and other files under control.


Bill Hassell, sysadmin
Michael Schulte zur Sur
Honored Contributor

Re: Oracle failed to start dure to no space for the log to grow.

Hi Cazxd,

are you still with us?

greetings,

Michael