Renaming / deleting listener.log and alert log

OK folks - please help me out with this old chestnut:

When the listener log, and the database alert log, start to reach unwieldy sizes, it's time to either delete the log, or - better - rename it, so that Oracle will start a fresh one. But the question of whether this can be done "on the fly", whilst the listener or database (respectively) are still running, or whether you have to stop the listener or shutdown the database instance before doing so, seems to depend on which version of Oracle and which operating system are running.

So, by way of clarification, can anyone give a definitive answer to these questions:

Is it safe to delete or rename the listener log file whilst the listener is still running, for Oracle 8i under Windows 2000 Server? And how about deleting/renaming the database alert log file without shutting down the instance, under the same configuration (8i, Windows 2k)?

Same question for Oracle 9i under Win2k ?

Same question for Oracle 8i under Solaris?

Same question for Oracle 9i under Solaris?

If there's a clear consensus on these answers, this would be a handy FAQ answer!

Regards,

Paul

Paul Vincent
DBA
UCE Birmingham
paul.vincent_at_uce.ac.uk

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