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    Can not allocate log, archival required; LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST destination string can

    • Article Type: General
    • Product: Aleph
    • Product Version: 16.02

    Description:
    The Web and GUI are both not working. When we try to do "dlib" or "util", nothing happens. (There is no error message, but it doesn't do anything.)

    We tried rebooting. We can do "dlib" and "util" now but Oracle didn't come up. We see the following in the alert_log:

    ORACLE Instance aleph0 - Can not allocate log, archival required
    Fri Jan 18 12:08:15 2008
    ARCH: Connecting to console port...
    Thread 1 cannot allocate new log, sequence 23074
    All online logs needed archiving
    Current log# 4 seq# 23073 mem# 0: /ora01/oradata/aleph0/aleph0_redo_04.log
    Fri Jan 18 13:10:44 2008
    Starting ORACLE instance (normal)
    LICENSE_MAX_SESSION = 0
    LICENSE_SESSIONS_WARNING = 0
    SCN scheme 3
    Fri Jan 18 13:26:49 2008
    Starting ORACLE instance (normal)
    LICENSE_MAX_SESSION = 0
    LICENSE_SESSIONS_WARNING = 0


    When we try to start Oracle with util o, we get:

    SQL*Plus: Release 9.2.0.8.0 - Production on Fri Jan 18 13:34:52 2008

    Copyright (c) 1982, 2002, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.

    idle> Connected to an idle instance.
    idle> idle> ORA-16032: parameter LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST destination string cannot be translated
    ORA-07286: sksagdi: cannot obtain device information.
    SVR4 Error: 2: No such file or directory
    idle> Disconnected

    Resolution:
    Our staff analyzed this as follows:

    The oracle archive filesystem was unmounted.

    We can’t see an Oracle hot backup from Jan 13, I only see one from Jan 16 with the size of 10GB:
    sunfire-a16(1) >>pwd
    /backup
    sunfire-a16(1) >>ls -lrt
    total 46018784
    drwx------ 2 oracle dba 8192 Mar 31 2004 lost+found/
    -rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba 1112123392 Jan 11 02:21 oracle_backup_logs.080111.tar.gz
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root other 4411216384 Jan 13 02:11 aleph_backup_080113.tar.gz
    -rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba 2667630080 Jan 14 19:07 oracle_backup_logs.080114.tar.gz
    -rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba 2023775744 Jan 15 02:38 oracle_backup_logs.080115.tar.gz
    -rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba 2372171264 Jan 16 02:45 oracle_backup_logs.080116.tar.gz
    -rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba 10963107840 Jan 16 03:39 ora_backup_hot.080116.tar.gz

    In any case, Oracle hot backup size can be changed in case you had some special indexes job that created lots of archives files, this process backup do backups the datafiles and the archives files.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Customer reply:
    Because the backup was taking up more than two-thirds of the /backup partition space--following its copy to an external drive, located at /storage/backup--we deleted it. You will find the 44G file in the directory /storage/backup. Please refer to the incident mentioned in the opening entry; it was placed on Monday and will probably be related.

    I ran the hot backup procedure again last night and it is back to its more usual size of 10G.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    It may be that the some job created lots of archive files that caused the backup to be big. I think we can ignore this backup now that the size for the next backup came back to its normal size.


    • Article last edited: 10/8/2013