Re: Need help locating correct trace file.

In our last gripping episode afairch_at_phaedo.com wrote:
> I need help with a script that I am writing to move and rename a
> database. The script currently uses sqlplus to do a "backup control
> file to trace" and then uses the trace file that was created.
>
> The trace file that is created is named something lide ora_PID.trc,
> where PID is the process id of the process that created the file. I
> originally thought that would be the sqlplus pid, but it appears that
 a
> new process is spawned to write the trace file. Does anyone know a
> simple and more importantly reliable way to determine what process
 that
> is. My fallback plan is to make some educated guesses based on the
 date
> and time stamp on the file, but that does leave more room for error
> than I would like.
>
> some (hopefully) helpful information:
> Oracle version: 8.1.6
> OS: Solaris 2.6 (SunOS 5.6)
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Anthony
> afairch_at_phaedo.com
>
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> http://www.deja.com/
>

I shall make some presumptions and base my response upon them:

1. This is a 'one-shot' occurrence
2. There is only one trace file of importance

From these presumptions I would suggest you utilise 'grep' to determine which trace file you need. You can 'grep' the trace files for text unique to the 'backup controlfile to trace' output and presuming you have but one trace file that meets this criteria 'grep' will return, with a bit of output massaging, the file name of the requisite trace file. You will need to utilise 'awk' as well, to process the output from 'grep' and isolate the file name. An example follows:

TRCFILE=`grep 'CONTROLFILE' *.trc | awk -F":" '{print $1}'`

The variable TRCFILE is now set with the filename of the trace file generated from the 'alter database backup controlfile to trace;' command. Again I state that I presume only one trace file will match the 'grep' criteria. Should this not be the case the above can be modified to, hopefully, achieve the desired result:

TRCFILE=`grep 'CONTROLFILE' *.trc | awk -F":" '{print $1}' | sort -u | head -1`

This makes another presumption that the embedded PID value will increase for each run of the script -- a presumption that cannot truly be relied upon should the UNIX server be up for a considerable period of time (the process id's cycle and can therefore be smaller for later runs). A third option is to utilise your second thought of date/time stamps on the files:

FLIST=`ls -ltr *.trc | awk '{print $9}' | head -10` TRCFILE=`grep 'CONTROLFILE' $FLIST | awk -F":" '{print $1}'`

Limiting the available file list to the 10 newest files should isolate the trace file in question. Passing this list to 'grep' should provide only one file name, the currently created trace file.

There may be other solutions, such as Perl scripts and such, but I wanted to give you a starting place. I hope I have done that to your satisfaction.

--
David Fitzjarrell
Oracle Certified DBA


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