Corrupted data blocks

A fortnight ago, I had both non-production database instances rendered inoperable due to corrupted data blocks. I am still unsure of the cause, and would like to know if others have had the same problem, and in what circumstances.

The associated error messages are:
ORA-00600 internal error, arguments [3225] ORA-01578 Oracle data block corrupted
and a third error which lists the corrupted dbs file name

My environment is:
Digital AlphaStation 200 4/166
OpenVMS 6.1-1H2
Oracle 7.1.3.2.0

During the period that these errors accrued, we had two external SCSI devices connected to the alpha, and they caused a slow increase in the error counts. The VMS error log showed both READ PHYSICAL BLOCK and WRITE PHYSICAL BLOCK errors, which seem to temporally associated with the Oracle errors.

Oracle support stated that the corruption was in memory, but no memory errors were logged and the corruption persisted after a cold reboot, so I think that they may have started in memory, but were written to disk. In my opinion the software has failed to handle the physical errors correctly - I would expect that in the case of an attempt to write to a dbs file failing, the associated tablespace should be taken offline. What do you think? Received on Wed Mar 29 1995 - 16:31:28 CEST