Turn off automatic logging

We are running Oracle 7.3.2.1 in a heavily replicated environment. We noticed that it was taking quite a while to connect to Oracle using SQL*PLUS (~60 seconds). After talking to Oracle support, we were told to run $ORACLE_HOME/bin/otrccref. After running this the connect time was greatly reduced.
The problem was that three files
$ORACLE_HOME/otrace/admin/{collect.dat}{regid.dat}{process.dat} had
grown to about 100M each. After running otrccref, the files were down to a reasonable size (336228 bytes was the biggest). It appears that more is going on than just appending an entry to the end of the file each time a connection is made. It is almost as if Oracle is searching these files for a place to make this entry. (of course the files are not ascii and unreadable)
We were told that some type of logging is enabled by default and the only way to disable this was to set an environment variable. Unfortunately we cannot do this for the replication jobs since they do not operate in an OS environment (BTW, we are running Unix SunOS 5.5.1).

Can anyone tell me what otrccref is doing and how can this logging be disabled? Also any insight into the other utilities located in
$ORACLE_HOME/bin like otrcfmt, otrcrep, otrcsvr, etc... would be
appreciated.

Thanks,

Glenn Ferguson		@Home Network
glenn_at_home.net		Oracle DBA