Slow performance on index creation

We are trying to create some very large indexes on our HP machine, and performance is EXTREMELY slow. The machine is a relatively small machine, but the numbers we are getting back from Oracle seem very poor even for this machine.

We increased the db_block_buffers to 5000, multi_block_read_count to 32 and sort_area_size to about 60MB. One of the indexes being created is about 34MB, 1 million rows, and only on one 20-byte CHAR column. The process creating the index is the only account on the system. There is only one index tablespace, and it is entirely on one physical disk. The data tablespace is on a separate physical disk, and the redo logs, rollback, system, etc. are on a third physical disk.

The index sort seems to all fit in memory (TEMP tablespace size is not decreased), but the writes to disk are taking forever, and seem very slow. In SQL*DBA, the Request Rate on the File I/O Monitor screen is only anywhere from 7-40 writes/s, sometimes peaking at 50, for the index tablespace. What unit of measurement is that statistic in? Does this seem like a low value when the monitor is updating at its default rate (5 seconds)?

Our redo logs are only 512K. I know this is small, but I didn't think it would have this much of an effect on performance. Could this be some of the reason for our lousy numbers? Is Oracle spending a lot of time doing log switches and such?

We also have NOT done anything with parallel index creation, since this machine has only one processor, or multiple database writers. Given the above configuration, any thoughts on whether those 2 options will help us?

Any other ideas on INIT.ORA parameters to change, or Oracle statistics to monitor? Need more information on our configuration? Please e-mail me directly in addition to posting to the newsgroup.

Regards,
Brian

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Brian M. Biggs                             mailto:bbiggs_at_cincom.com
Cincom Systems, Inc.                       voice: (513) 677-7661
http://www.cincom.com/