Oracle process consumes all paging space on AIX

Machine: Aix 5.1 8 GB RAM/6 GB swap

Database: 9.2.0.6 (a 9.2.0.4 database is also running on the machine in a separate ORACLE_HOME).

Listener: 9.2.0.6

Two databases running on the machine, production (9.2.0.4) and training
(9.2.0.6). The training database is largely idle with a few background
processes running and occasional interactive users. The production database is very active and frequently has over 100 users (dedicated connections). 9.2.0.6 was installed on 2/21 and the training database was upgraded to 9.2.0.6 at that time.

On 3/3, during the peak load of the day, the machine crashed. We determined that it ran out of memory via events logged in the syslog "Unable to fork(). Out of memory.

On 3/4, it did it again during peak hours.

3/5 and 3/6 were weekend days and there were no problems (low usage).

Monday, 3/7 the problem occurred again. This time we had some logging in place. A user connected locally via sqlplus to the train database
(LOCAL=YES). The user never got to the SQL prompt and didn't execute
any SQL statements. The process appeared to hang from the user's perspective. From the logs, we see the shadow process for this session consuming more and more memory until the system was locked up (we're talking Gigs). The process was killed (or died) and the system came back. At that point, we shut the 9.2.0.6 training database down and the problem has not re-occurred. We do not think this is a problem with our application as it was not running during the last crash, just sqlplus.

We've checked everything we can think of and the database itself and oracle installation look fine. Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Brian Petry

MedPlus, Inc. Received on Thu Mar 10 2005 - 14:57:25 CST