Re: Oracle hangs, no errors

From: Burt Peltier <burtpelt_at_bellsouth.net>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 16:02:27 -0600
Message-ID: <CTcN7.6187$S93.331557@e3500-atl2.usenetserver.com>

Those darn Oracle on Unix systems, you really have to reboot once every 248 days!

We just did a building power maintenance last weekend, and had to shutdown some Unix systems that were up for 2 years.

Good thing your not on windoze, we reboot those nightly or at least weekly. :)

"Patrick" <buckeye234_at_excite.com> wrote in message news:3bbfc440.0111280817.59fcda71_at_posting.google.com...
> "Vladimir M. Zakharychev" <bob_at_dpsp-yes.com> wrote in message
news:<9u0hk4$hi0$1_at_babylon.agtel.net>...
> > This one sounds like the problem they may be hitting. As far as I
remember,
> > this bug is connected with control file corruption on normal shutdowns
of
> > the database which was running non-stop more than 248 days or so.
Solaris
> > has a ticker counting number of seconds since last restart, this ticker
overflows
> > and becomes negative and Oracle goes nuts. The workaround was to reboot
> > the system once in a while and if it was up more than said amount of
time,
> > shutdown abort the oracle instance and reboot the system. They also said
that
> > if controlfile corruption is already in effect, there is no other way to
get the
> > system back than to reinstall and restore from last known good backup.
By the
> > way, the bug was not platform-specific, it was confirmed on other unixes
too,
> > though time to failure was different for some of them (where ticker
counted
> > hundredths of a second the failure was coming earlier).
> >
> > Correct me if I am wrong.
> >
> > --
> > Vladimir Zakharychev (bob_at_dpsp-yes.com)
http://www.dpsp-yes.com
> > Dynamic PSP(tm) - the first true RAD toolkit for Oracle-based internet
applications.
> > All opinions are mine and do not necessarily go in line with those of my
employer.
> >
> >
> Vladimir,
> I ran into this bug, the so-called 248 day bug, with 8.1.6. There
> is no corruption caused by this error. Any corruptions were caused by
> DBA's panicking. If the system has been up more than 248 days and you
> try to start or stop the instance, it will hang. The way to fix it is
> to do a shutdown abort, bounce the server and then restart the
> database.

>

> The problem lies in the way Oracle reads the OS-timer that tracks how
> long the system has been running.. When it reaches a certain point, it
> starts with negative numbers and this is what Oracle didn't like.

>

> As far as the original post here goes, the bug didn't cause any
> problem to a running database. I have an 8.1.6 database, running on
> Solaris 2.6, that has been up since August of 2000. No problems.

>

> I'm wondering if they are in Archive log mode and are having problems
> archiving before the redo-log is needed again. This will appear to be
> a hang. Without more information, it is hard to diagnose.

>

> HTH,
> Patrick ..
Received on Wed Nov 28 2001 - 16:02:27 CST