Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
The Alert Log File
The
is a grab bag of messages about the state of the database instance.
It contains entries about significant database events, such as database startup and
shutdown, nondefault initialization parameters,
alert log file
alert log file
A text file that contains entries about sig-
nificant database events, such as data-
base startup and shutdown, nondefault
initialization parameters, and various
errors. The alert log file is stored in the
directory specified by the system param-
eter
ALTER
SYSTEM
commands, and var-
ious errors.
Locating the Alert Log File
BACKGROUND_DUMP_DEST
.
At Scott's widget company, Janice, the DBA, doesn't remember when she made
the changes to the redo log files. She wanted to increase the redundancy of the
redo log files, so she added a second set of redo logs on a different disk. She can
find information about the redo logs in the alert log file.
Janice's first step is to locate the alert log file itself; since she recently con-
verted one of the Oracle databases from a Windows server to a Linux server, she
hasn't yet memorized the locations of the Oracle-related directories, so she needs
to check one of the initialization parameters. This log file is a text file in the direc-
tory specified by the initialization parameter
BACKGROUND_DUMP_DEST
:
show parameter background_dump_dest
NAME TYPE VALUE
---------------- -------- -------------------------------
background_dump string /u01/app/oracle/admin/ord/bdump
_dest
From a Linux operating system command-line session, Janice locates the alert
log file:
[oracle@oltp oracle]$ cd /u01/app/oracle/admin/ord/bdump
[oracle@oltp bdump]$ ls -l alert_*.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle oinstall 4006 Jun 22 22:23
alert_ord.log
[oracle@oltp bdump]$ vi alert_ord.log
The alert log file's name on Linux is
alert_
, followed by the instance's con-
nection identifier and an extension of
.log
.
Viewing the Alert Log File
Now that Janice knows where to find the alert log file, she opens it using the
Linux
vi
text editor.
