Re: Help: infinite loop creating trace file hangs database

On 13 Jan 2004 13:00:10 -0700, nothome_at_spammers.are.scum (Malcolm Dunnett) wrote:

>
> I have an Oracle 8.1.7.4 server.
>
> Occasionally ( usually once every few months, but twice in
>the last week ) one of the foreground server processes will
>crash. When it does it creates a trace file which says it
>is doing a "Dump of buffer cache at level 9". This creates
>a trace file of about 5MB. The problem is that at the point
>where 5MB of trace information is created the process appears
>to go into an infinite CPU loop ( in one instance it was still
>running 14 hours later ). The process appears to be holding
>some locks as when it goes into this loop all the other server
>processes eventually hang. Killing the process doing the
>dump causes all the other server processes to resume normally.
>
> While there is clearly some bug that is causing the server
>process to crash the more immediate problem is that the cpu
>loop/locks cause it to effectively hang the entire database
>when it does. Is there a way to prevent this dying process from
>taking this buffer dump ( or to prevent the buffer dump from
>going into an infinite loop )?
>
> There are no error reported in the alert log when this occurs.

To me it looks like you have max_dump_file_size set to 5M. Try setting it to unlimited and check whether the dump completes.

--
Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA